A Wickless Candle
by HatchetNoseGelphie
Summary: Inspired by, but not based off of, the story of Frankenstein, when Frexspar Thropp becomes motivated to create what he has known as the "lost child" that he and his wife never had. New to an unfamiliar world, and unfortunately green-skinned, Elphaba Thropp must now discover what her purpose is, and what foreign words such as "love", "affection", and "beauty" mean. Slowburn Gelphie.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer: I do not own Wicked, or any of the characters, nor do I own Frankenstein, or any ideas inspired by it**

 **Plot Summary: Inspired by, but not based off of, the story of _Frankenstein_ by Mary Shelley, A Wickless Candle is about when Frexspar Thropp becomes motivated to create what he has known as the "lost child" that he and his wife never had. New to an unfamiliar world, and unfortunately green-skinned, Elphaba Thropp must now discover what her purpose is, and what foreign words such as "love", "affection", and "beauty" mean.**

 **A/N: Please R &R! Reviews keep a writer writing, I always say :).**

To say that the young, beautiful blossom that was Nessarose Thropp was concerned on behalf of her father would be quite the understatement. In truth, she was downright terrified for him. Ever since he had conceived that awful idea to create the lost child – the Unnamed God's child. At this point, Nessa was twelve years old. She was the most intelligent person in her class, but it didn't take a genius to know that sooner or later, Frexspar Thropp would work himself down to his grave.

Nessa was naïve enough, though, to only know very little about what had happened with her mother – why had she died? Why had she died birthing Shell? Why had Nessa's older sister died? Why hadn't she made it to birth?

Death was something that had begun to surround Nessa, ever since she was five and her mother died. Then, at age seven, her aunt died. Her closest friend died when she was nine. When she was eleven, she learned about her older sister, the one who never made it. That was also when her father conceived his idea and spent the next nine months until today working on it.

He nurtured this idea, spending hours upon hours every day caring for it. He rarely joined them for dinner; Nessa was stuck with just Nanny and Shell. Nanny looked after her – fed her, supported her lower back, and consoled her when she would get upset over her father.

Today, it was storming outside. Nessa was scared, but she wasn't quite sure why she was so scared. She sat in a room, perched on a chair with Nanny behind her, combing through her long, silky hair. She hated her sister, she realized.

With all the burning passion her armless body could muster, by the holy divinity of the Unnamed God, she hated her sister. Father had no reason to try to recreate her. To put her where she was not meant to be. It's for the Unnamed God, he said. He was reconciling a mistake. He was restoring the child that the Unnamed God didn't mean to take.

"Why does Father have to make her?" she said softly, more of a statement than a question. Nanny just continued playing with her hair and began humming lightly, a Quadling lullaby. Nessa hardly remembered Munchkinland; they'd been in Quadling Country for eight years, ever since she was four.

For some reason, this morning, Nessa had woken up with such an awful feeling. She couldn't quite ascertain why she felt so uneasy, but the storm was not making things any easier. With a jolt of anxiety, Nessa stood up.

Nanny frowned at her. "Come back, my pet. Nanny isn't done with your hair," she complained.

"I've got to go check on Father," was all she said.

It was difficult to walk without a support, but the stairs to the basement were near, and they had railings that she could lean against. She appreciated the support that her father had built into the house when they moved here. That was back when he actually cared for her and Shell; now… Well, he had completely missed her birthday two months ago. If that didn't say something about it, then she wasn't sure what did.

"Father?" she asked tentatively when she reached the bottom of the stairs. He was bent over his table, intricately working on applying some sort of chemical to the skin of his creation. He was grunting in pain, dollops of sweat rolling down his face and burns all across his hands from whatever chemical he was applying.

He didn't respond to her; he didn't even notice. She said it again, and then again. Carefully, wobbling a little but not enough to tip over, Nessa trekked across the stone floor. Her bare feet were cold against it, and she felt as if there was no life in this room aside from the small, flickering candle right beside the table, and even that wavered between life and death, as if it couldn't quite decide its own fate, and with that, the fate of the creation on the table.

Frex jumped a little when he felt her behind him. When he turned to look at her, there was a crazed look of excitement in his eyes. "Tonight is the night, my Nessarose," he said softly, gently reaching out a hand to stroke her cheek.

She was terrified. She had never seen him look like that before. Her heart was racing in her chest, and she felt hyperaware of the presence of the lifeless body on the table, composed out of death itself and woven together into some monstrosity that Nessa was so horrified to look at. She almost didn't look at it at all.

"Look at your sister, Nessa. Look at your older sister. You'll be meeting her soon," he prompted, his voice soft, tired.

And she did.

"Father… Why is she green? The Unnamed God gave you a green child?"

He frowned down at the corpse, and Nessa knew that she had lost a majority of the little attention she had of his. "She's… special," he smiled then, wide and loving. "This chemical I had to use to keep her skin flawless… It changed the color. But she's alright. She's going to be gorgeous, Nessarose. As shiningly emerald as the Wizard's palace. You'll see. I'll have my Elphaba, and she will be gorgeous. You'll all see…"

"Father…" Nessa cried softly, feeling tears prick at her eyes. This wasn't okay. This wasn't natural. What was he doing? Why was he going to bring it to life? There was no reason. Whatever ideas he had for it, whatever justification he had convinced himself of, it didn't make sense to her. The dead should stay dead, and that's that, not be brought back as some unnatural, horrific, _green_ monstrosity.

When looking at the corpse objectively, Nessa could concede that her father did a very good job as hiding the stitches where he connected the body parts, but the body was at least six feet tall, and was only aged to about fifteen. In dim lighting, it might pass for an actual human, but the moment that hideous verdigris was exposed to the eye, the beholder would realize just how disgusting the monster is.

Lightning struck, and Frexspar let out a small shout of adrenaline. His machine was hooked into the monster, needles prodding it everywhere. "It's time…" he whispered. And then he flipped the switch.

The machine was big, and bulky. It was man-made and, Nessa thought, the work of the devil. It rattled and clanged in an inhuman way, and the most revolting stench came from an exhaust pipe sticking out of the side of it. The machine shook the nightstand that had been pulled up beside the worktable, and with it, the small glass of water that Nanny had brought down earlier. If it weren't for Nanny, Nessa was certain her father's creation would have made him as dead as it. He certainly would not have taken care of himself.

Slowly, like a child coming into the light after having been locked in a dark closet during a playful game of hide-and-seek for fifteen minutes because she was so great at hiding, the creation's eyes opened, fearful as a baby bear encountering a full-grown possum that she had never seen before and curious as a fox kit exploring outside the den away from her mother's watchful gaze and innocent as a young lamb approaching a prowling lioness with friendly naïveté, unaware of the fate that awaited her if she did so.

"Elphaba…" Nessa whispered the name, that fated name that was assigned to her elder sister before she was even born, given a legacy that she didn't want and so chose to abandon rather than be born into such a name.

Her sister's eyes were unfocused but wide, and she took in a deep breath, shuddering it as it came out. Those eyes, though, were like chasms, dark and deep and filled with mysterious secrets that had somehow formed themselves within just one short moment of being alive.

Nessa felt tears begin to fall from her eyes, but in spite of herself, she did not hate this creature. She couldn't. She couldn't hate her sister. "Oh, Elphaba…"

"Monstrous."

Nessa turned to look at her father, and was both shocked and haunted at the absolute ire she saw in those shadowed eyes. "Father?" she asked tenderly, her voice no more than a murmur.

"It's monstrous. This thing is not the Unnamed God's child… This devil… This devil is not beautiful… I had meant her to be beautiful… Oh, by the Unnamed God!" he gagged then, hand coming to cover his mouth. He was trembling, eyes open wide with fear. "This thing is not beautiful! This revulsion! This demon! This absolute fiend!"

Elphaba didn't hear, or if she did, she didn't understand what they were saying. How could she? She was an infant, a newborn, just now experiencing the world for the first time. Slowly, she felt her fingers, pressing them down into the table. Her eyes moved about, and her mouth opened, but no sound was made.

With the unconfident strength of a toddler attempting its first steps, she pushed with her hands, beginning to raise herself up from the table.

"No!" Frexspar shouted then, his voice brimming with anger and terror. His hand snatched the cup of water from the nightstand and flung its contents at Elphaba. What could that do to stop her?

Nessa was prepared to tell him that that was useless, but then the water hit Elphaba's bare chest, and her skin began to sizzle in what sounded like a quite painful way.

She looked down at her own chest, eyes wide at the new sensation. Elphaba seemed as if she wasn't sure what to make of it. She lifted her hands, stopping to examine them for a moment and see, Nessa thought, what they were, what she was moving, and if they were hers. Then those green hands slapped themselves onto that plateau of a ridge on her, stretching from one side of her chest to the other, and she howled in agony.

With a jump at the scream, Frex spat on the creature and bolted out of the basement. "Father!" Nessa called, distressed, but he paid her no heed. She felt dizzy, unfocused. She almost didn't know what was happening anymore, who that person in front of her was.

Carefully, she sat down in the chair her father had just occupied. Elphaba was examining herself, discovering her body, and gently prodding at the marks on her chest.

"It's okay," Nessa said, drawing the girl's eyes. She managed a small smile through her tears. "It's going to be okay, you know what? It will be okay."

Elphaba met her gaze, and seemed almost quizzical for a second. She opened her mouth, and thought about something. "Et… Et wid beh oooka?" she tried. Her voice was hoarse, rough as a raw stone. Nessa thought she was trying to copy her mouth movements, and her smile widened in spite of herself.

"Yes… Yes, Elphaba. Et wid beh oooka," she laughed. Then, something occurred to her as Elphaba realized they had surroundings and slowly began to examine them, looking about herself and all around the little laboratory, even if she couldn't make sense of them as a newborn. "Nanny!" Nessa called. "Oh Nanny, I need your help!"

Elphaba looked at her again, eyes narrowed a bit. She attempted to say 'Nanny', but it sounded more like gibberish than her 'It will be okay'. Nessa laughed a little more, delighted at the life she saw in this being now. Catching on, Elphaba went, "Hah… Hah… Hah hah…" and just about smiled herself.

"Nanny, you must come see this!"

"Nanny's coming, you pet. Nanny's old. Her hips don't work like they used to," the old woman grumbled as she worked her way slowly down the stairs.

"What's going on, Nanny? Nessa? Did Father finally do it?" Shell asked, peeking his head out from the top of the stairs.

Nessa rolled her eyes at his incessant nosiness. "You go check on Father, Shell. Go find him."

After a minute, Nanny reached the bottom of the stairs. Elphaba looked at her with a mix between fascination and fear. Nanny hobbled closer to them. "My, my… Frex's got some awful lighting down here, don't he?"

"No, Nanny, she really is quite green."

"By Lurline!" Nanny gasped as she caught sight of the girl's painfully blistered chest. "What happened to you, you hideous child? Did he make you like that?"

"Water did that. He threw a cup of water at her. It burned her, I think."

"Burm…" Came Elphaba's tentative echo, probably trying to say 'burned'. She didn't seem to have full control of her tongue yet.

Nessa leaned back in the chair, giving Elphaba an encouraging smile. "She doesn't understand us. He had named her Elphaba, after Saint Aelphaba, I presume. He freaked out when she opened her eyes. He called her a monster, a fiend. But… When she opened her eyes, all I saw was my sister."

Gently, Nanny laid a hand on Elphaba's shoulder. The green girl jumped a little, looking down at the hand with curiosity. "Sisser…" she tried, again, to mimic the movements of Nessa's mouth. She grabbed Nanny's hand roughly. "Sisser. Sisser. Et wid beh oooka. Sisser burm?"

"Let's get you some clothing, dear," Nanny said, taking her hand and retrieving one of Frex's lab coats from a hanger on the wall and wrapping it carefully around a naked green body after removing the hooks from the machine.

Elphaba was intrigued by the sensation, and pulled at the clothing with interest. "Burm sisser et wid beh oooka burm burm sisser?" She met their eyes with a touch of anxiety.

Both Nessa and Nanny were confused for a moment, but then Nessa realized what Elphaba was trying to do and struggled to hold back her giggles. "She's trying to communicate. She's trying to join our conversation. She just doesn't know how."

At the new words, Elphaba took a little delight, grinning like a fascinated child. "Doh-ow. Doh-ow. Sisser doh-ow et wid beh oooka doh-ow. Burm doh-ow," she smiled at them proudly.

Nanny patted her shoulder. "There, there, dear. You must be starved. Let's go get you something to eat."

It was an endeavor, Nanny getting Elphaba to stand and ascend the stairs. Elphaba's first steps were shaky, a toddler trying to imitate her peers. But she gave it her best effort, and only fell once or twice. After Nanny got her up the stairs, she abandoned her briefly to help Nessa balance as she, too, climbed up into the living room.

Only… When they got back up there, there was no trace of Elphaba. "Sweet Lurline…" Nanny murmured in shock, looking around nervously. "Where could that little monster have gone?"

"Elphaba?" Nessa called out worriedly.

It was then that they heard a slight creaking, coming from down the hallway. Nanny rushed, with a hand on Nessa's back, propelling her forward, towards Frex's room, but it was too late.

Frexspar was despairing in his bed, head in his hands, murmuring prayers for forgiveness to the Unnamed God. Shell was on the bed beside him, trying to comfort him in the best way his seven year-old mind knew how, by talking. But Frex ignored him.

As the door creaked open and Elphaba peered curiously into the room, Frex noticed. He sprang into action, shouting curses and running at the innocent girl. She looked on in fear, not sure what was happening, until he grabbed a bookend and began to beat her with it.

Elphaba cried out in pain, raising her hands to try to block herself. Nessa and Nanny were both screaming at Frex, and Shell had broken out into tears (as had Nessa), but Frex was relentless. He cried out his anger at the poor girl, until Nanny left Nessa to push him off of her.

"Get out of here!" Frex screeched at Elphaba, throwing the bookend. It hit her hard in the shoulder, and she stumbled back, trembling from head-to-toe and eyes wide with panic. "Go!"

She probably didn't understand the word, but she understood enough. Elphaba stumbled away, running as fast as her clumsy legs would take her, climbing through an open window.

"Elphaba!" Nessa called worriedly, but the girl didn't even stop. Not for the first time, Nessa cursed her disability, her armlessness. If she only had balance, she could chase after her… But she didn't, and Shell was curled up on the bed, crying in fear, and Nanny was dragging Frex into the bath to force him into a cold shower, and there was nothing any of them could do.

 **XXX**

She was running. She was running, and running, and she didn't even know what running was. All she knew was that she hurt all over, and that those beings had hurt her. She was gone, running and running and trying to escape what she didn't even know into something she didn't even know and she didn't even know she was escaping or what escape was only that she was running and she was running away from there away from the beings that hurt her because the beings that hurt her made her running and since she was running she hurt too because she didn't know her body and her unknown body didn't want to run and she felt heavy and uncomfortable and completely out of touch with her body as she ran and didn't even know it or what she was feeling only that she didn't like it and she wanted it all to be gone but she was gone and she was running and running and she didn't know what else she could do only that it all burm and she was running and

 **XXX**

"Galinda, darling, I don't think you understand right now the importance of you getting married at a young age. Before you know it, your metabolism will go out the window, and you'll have sagging skin, and wrinkles. You're seventeen right now. You should have been married two years ago."

With a heavy sigh, Galinda closed her eyes. She was tired of her mother's lectures, and she was tired of being yelled at. "I'm looking, Momsie. I am."

Her mother crossed her arms over her chest in an unconvinced way. "Really? You're looking. Is that why you just broke up with Arnie? He could have made you a good husband, you know. He's going into medicine; do you know how much medicine pays? You'd get to be a happy, plump little housewife for him. But you have to marry when you're young."

Galinda scrunched her nose a little. Arnie had been…revolting, to say the least. He had a fat tongue and crooked teeth, breath like he had just eaten out of the garbage, and brown hair that was so greasy, it looked black. Aside from that, he was touchy – too touchy.

"I'm not going to defend myself, Momsie," Galinda shrugged as she touched up her mascara. "I'll be going to Shiz University next year. I will find someone there."

"You know, I don't really get why you want to go to university at all," her mother found a new avenue of ridicule. "Your father and I were married by the time we were fourteen, and I had you not two years later. You should have found someone by now. Housewives don't need to be educated."

Rolling her eyes, Galinda began to feel annoyed at her mother. "I'm going to Shiz University," she said with a sort of finality to her tone. "I will find a husband there, and I will be educated. There are things I wanna learn about, Momsie, like sorcery, and architecture."

Larena shook her head disapprovingly. "That's all a man's work. You don't understand. Oh, however did we end up raising you so horribly wrong?" she lamented with an air of drama to her tone.

Gritting her teeth for a second before remembering that it wasn't ladylike, Galinda tried to focus on her makeup rather than her mother's harsh words. "I really haven't the faintest idea," she responded lightly, deciding to give up on fighting her mother for now. "I will find a husband."

She would go to Shiz University, too. That much, Galinda promised herself.

 **XXX**

Two years had passed since the incident where her sister had been recreated. The entire Thropp family had spent those two years trying their best to forget about her. Frex seemed to, the very next day after she was gone, revert back to how he was before he even realized his project. He was a warm father to Nessa and Shell once more, remembering birthdays and cooking on the odd day when he felt like giving Nanny a break. He helped them with their schoolwork and taught them Unionist lessons, but he had a much bigger stress now on the fact that the dead should remain dead. They had also moved back to Munchkinland shortly after.

That and the fact that he now avoided the statue of Saint Aelphaba in the lower quarters of Center Munch like the plague were the only indications that anything at all had happened on that night. Looking in from the outside, one could compare the Frex from three years ago to the Frex today and find no obvious change, just a slight shift in interests.

Nessa, however, was having quite the hard time forgetting. She didn't know how he could do it so easily. For her, the image of those warm, dark cocoa eyes were ingrained into her memory, endless chasms of mystery. It was as if those eyes alone held all of the answers to life.

Once, she had persuaded Frex to talk to her about that night. It was about a month afterwards, and he had been in a contemplative mood. Nessa had brought the subject up, and he had told her, curiously, that it was the eyes that showed him just how inhuman this creature was. He had stated that that was the last time he would ever talk about such a thing.

This dinner table was suddenly suffocating for Nessa. Nanny was trying to coax some more yams into her mouth, but she wasn't hungry anymore. Using her legs, she pushed her seat back and stood up. "I shall go take a walk. Nanny?"

"Nanny don't get to eat then. Nanny never get to eat," she grumbled, but stood and began accompanying Nessa out of the house. Nessa never did find out where her sister had gone, and if she had arms, she would go looking for her.

The two of them walked in silence for a long while, but Nessa wouldn't call it a stretch to say that the same thing was on both of their minds. Whenever Frex would show his subtle changes in behavior, Nanny and Nessa would share very worried, but knowing looks.

Nessa realized that that night had affected Nanny almost as, if not as much as, deeply as it had affected her. In that strange green creature, Nanny had seen a child, an innocent life that needed to be guided and aided, no matter how hideous she truly was. Nanny had seen a "she", not an "it", when she looked into those eyes, much as Nessa had.

It was infuriating, not knowing what had happened to the six-foot human girl. If she aged, she'd be either two years old, or around seventeen. For all they knew, Elphaba could have been pelted to death with rocks, or unknowingly stepped into a lake and burned herself alive, or even a fire and burned herself alive.

Nessa shuddered at the thoughts, and Nanny's steadying hand on her lower back became more prominent. She glanced up at the sky and realized that the sun was going down already. The walk had been short, but it had been enough to clear her mind. She was about to suggest to Nanny that they turn back. But just then, that very moment, a hesitant voice rang out behind them.

"I remember you. Vaguely…"

The both of them spun around in sudden fright at the rich, deep voice. Nessa stumbled, but Nanny steadied her out of instinct. They were both shocked to see a tall, gangly figure some ten feet behind them. She was dressed in a drab, shapeless dress that was too big for her, and her hands were clutching the sides of the skirt in anxiety.

"Elphaba…" Nessa said, tentatively. The lighting was so dim now, she couldn't be sure. "Elphaba, is that you?"

The newcomer took a hesitant step forward. "That's what he called me…in his journals. They were in the pocket of the coat. After I learned how to read, I read them, and it explained a lot. I've been trying to track him down for months."

But Nessa wasn't paying attention anymore. Tears were streaming down her face and she shook her head slowly. "Oh, Elphaba…" she sighed.

Nanny left her for the green girl, immediately going to wrap her in a hug. "There, there, dear. Nanny's got you now."

But Elphaba stepped back, arms going around herself protectively. "I don't like…touching," she admitted.

"Why'd you come?" Nessa asked, more out of concern than anything else. "You remember how he treated you last time he saw you, don't you?"

"Yes," something dark flickered across Elphaba's eyes. "I need to talk to Frexspar. I want to join society. I can't do that alone. I tried. I need his help." Both Nanny and Nessa exchanged a hesitant look, and Elphaba went on. "I can convince him. Trust me. I just… I need you to take me to him. He can hit me all he likes."

This Elphaba was far different from the child that had presented herself to them on that table, the one who struggled to copy Nessa's mouth movements, curiously entered Frexspar's room, and ran off on her own. She had matured, and she had matured quickly. In two years, she had learned conversation, and ideas. She'd learned how to read, how to speak. All on her own.

"We'll take care of you, dearie," Nanny promised, beckoning Elphaba to follow them. She then placed a hand on Nessa's lower back and began to guide her back to the house. Elphaba was silent as she followed behind them, not even scuffling her feet, and Nanny had to continually glance behind her to make sure the green girl was following.

The walk back to the house seemed infinitely longer than the walk from. Nessa thought that they couldn't possibly have walked this far in such a short amount of time, but then the house came into view, and she felt her heart speed up a little in concern for her sister. How would Frex react to seeing her again? Would he beat her, like he did before? Would he greet her as an old acquaintance? The former seemed much more likely.

The door groaned irritably at them as they opened it, as if it was trying to warn them not to enter, to heed its warning just this once and not venture into the spiteful home. As death-riding rebels, though, they entered, feeling altogether ready and anxious for the interaction that might await them.

At first, Frexspar didn't see them. He was engaged in a game of dominoes with Shell, hunched over a table as he struggled not to lose to a clever nine-year-old. "Welcome back, Nessa. Nanny. I hope your walk was refreshing," he said halfmindedly.

But then Shell looked up and caught sight of them, of Nessa standing nervously with her shoulders high and tense, of Nanny with her chin raised in defense and a hand on Nessa's back, and then Elphaba, who had stepped forward in front of the both of them with her long, crooked nose high in the air, affecting an air of defiance. She was the picture of a strong front aside from the slight shaking of her hands on her skirt.

"See, Father?" Shell shouted. "I told you she was real! I told you! It wasn't a dream!"

Father's fist clenched before he turned; Nessa suspected he had an idea about what it was Shell was referring to. And then he turned.

The moment his eyes, wrinkled at the corners from suspicion and absolute hatred and dark with the depth of the emotion there, caught sight of Elphaba, it was as if someone had lit a match to a spilled leak of a highly flammable chemical.

"Get that fiend out of here!" he screamed as he leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair haphazardly in the process. "Devil! Monster! Abomination!" He took a cup of water in his hands and flung its contents at the girl.

"No!" Nessa shouted, nearly falling over in her attempts to block the liquid. However, it seemed that Elphaba had been expecting this sort of reaction, and she skillfully ducked to avoid the contents of the cup. "Father, don't hurt her!"

Shell desperately dipped under the table and came out on their side, wasting no time in grabbing one of Frex's hands in an attempt to restrain him. Nanny took the other one, and while Frexspar fought them, trying to get to his fiend as he labelled her with every evil name he could think of, the two of them held strong.

"Really, I only seek an audience," Elphaba stated in annoyance, crossing her arms over her chest.

He scoffed in response. "And why should I grant an audience to you?"

This was good, Nessa thought. He had stopped his hissing and spitting, and now he stood there panting, but at least speaking to the girl as if she were a human being like him.

"Did I ask you to make me? To tear me from the ground and push me, afflicted, into an unforgiving world, and then abandon me while you sit on your golden throne and praise God? Life is precious, I've learned, and I shall protect it, but I did not ask for it. I did not ask for this skin, or this face, no more than you ask for this conversation or my presence here today at all. You've determined your own fate, and now you must suffer the consequences. I can be your ruin if you let me. In your mistake, you created me with an unnatural height, an unnatural speed, an unnatural strength. I don't believe you meant to, but you did. I was to be your perfect specimen. Your perfect child. I've read your journals, Frexspar Thropp; there's no reason to lie to me. I guarantee you, if a God did exist, then He would take shame in knowing how you say it all in His name, how you justified your own blind psychosis by calling me His child. And now you call me the child of the devil. How bitterly you turn against your own creation, and so quickly. Now, you will pay me what I am due as an unwilling creation. I have requests to make. I want you to hear me out, and then you can cast me aside, or you can reconcile the hate you showed your God, and you will grant my simple requests. Believe me when I say you won't have to lift more than a couple fingers to do so.

Several times throughout her speech, Frex opened his mouth to say something, or would begin to speak, but Elphaba didn't let him quiet her, and she persevered with what she had to say. By the end of it, Frexspar looked absolutely outraged, completely bewildered, and most certainly intimidated.

His mouth struggled to form coherent words for a few seconds. He was dumbfounded, not quite sure how to process all of the emotions that came with everything Elphaba had said to him.

"What are your demands?" he finally managed, his voice course and angry.

"Not demands," she said lightly. "I prefer to call them requests, Father."

That seemed to enrage him. "I am _not_ your father!" Nanny and Shell had to reinforce their grips on his arms to keep him from lashing.

But Elphaba just smiled knowingly. "Did you not create me? Perhaps my terminology is wrong. I shall call you Creator."

"What are your demands, beast?" he near enough snarled.

Her smile became more of a grin, cocky and omniscient. "I have only survived these past two years out of yearning to learn. That's all I've ever wanted. The first town I entered did not go over well. I was wearing nothing but your cloak, with my hair mangled from a week without being tended, and the people reacted awfully. They pelted me with stones, and I had to discover that I was different. That I could not join society because I was different. I lived behind a library, scuttling behind the trash cans and collecting scraps of paper that were thrown away. The symbols on them, I knew that they had to mean something. Slowly, I heard people reading things. I would sneak in at night, and I would memorize symbols. After a year spent like this, I could read somewhat fluently. That's when the crew for the library changed, and a strict night security guard established her place. She caught me in there one night, and she beat me with a flashlight. I had to learn, and I had to learn fast. But the people… They started to leave things in that library. I would still sneak in, but I knew when she worked, and I knew how to avoid her. I found clothing, abandoned in the center. Sometimes food – until then, I had eaten out of the dumpster of a nearby restaurant. An umbrella, I found once. It was only when I changed my clothing that I noticed your journals, and I read them, just two months prior to now. I traveled all the way from Quadling Country in search of you. I lifted a dark hoodie that could conceal my pigmentation at night, and I never stopped reading. I want to join society, Frexspar Thropp. Don't you see? I want to join society. I want to learn. To study." She sighed and let her arms drop to her sides. "I wish to go to university. Put me under your name. Call me a lost cousin. Give me an identity. You named me, didn't you? Elphaba. Elphaba Thropp. Claim me, and you won't have to worry about me at all. By next year, I will be in university. I will not come home for break. I will remain there until I graduate, and never will you see me again. This is my request. You gave me life, but you did not give me a life, and I want both. This is my request."

 **A/N: Hope you liked the first chapter of A Wickless Candle! Please do leave reviews letting me know what you thought. I've really had fun with this idea so far!**


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N: I was, honestly, quite surprised by the feedback this weird little fic generated ahah. I wasn't really expecting anyone to like it! But, well, here's chapter two for you all! Please, remember to review! Reviews keep a writer writing :)**

Eight months passed, and through those eight months, Elphaba learned far more about conversation and social interactions than she had learned from overhearing conversations in the library. Nessa and Nanny made it their personal goals to teach her how to deal with rude people, and how to stand her ground. Shell helped, too. He taught her slang, and the more intimate aspects of society. She was getting along rather well with all of them.

Except, of course, for Frexspar, who avoided her presence and often acted like she didn't even exist. He gave her a room in the attic, dusty and small with a single pillow up against the window. He filed her as a returned step-cousin, twice removed. A story was created about how she fled from Ev, having been turned green by the awful waste at the border. But that was the most Frex did to help her, and Elphaba was okay with that. She was able to enroll herself in Shiz University, and that's all that mattered.

Although Frex wouldn't directly pay a dime for her transportation or enrollment, Nanny had access to many of his accounts, and while he knew where the money was going when it would disappear, he never spoke a word about it.

At one point, Nessa had said to her, "The trick to get people to give you a chance is in the presentation. You said that, when you got pelted with rocks, you were wearing that lab coat, and you were unbathed and, I can imagine, rather unkempt. People saw you as more of a wild animal than a person, and their response was to attack."

Not long after Elphaba had arrived at the Thropp house, Nanny had grabbed some oil-based shampoos from the market to try on Elphaba. Oil, fortunately, did not burn her, and they were able to acquire skin oils as well, which would help her wash up.

"If you want others to look at you like a human," Nessa had said, "You need to present yourself as one. Act as if the only difference between you and those you meet at university is that you're a slightly different hue. Treat them like people, and treat yourself like a person, and their first instinct would be, well… You should hope for _stirring_ at best, because stirring means they won't be attacking you."

"Stirring," Elphaba repeated, considering the word. What Nessa said was making sense to her, but she wasn't really certain why stirring was the best she should hope for.

Now, as she packed a small bag with what little she had as far as clothing and oils, Elphaba convinced herself that she could achieve stirring. Of course, at Shiz University, she would have to be put in one of the big dorms with about fifteen others, as she did not have an Ama, and her research showed that those without Amas went into those massive dorms. Hopefully, those girls in the dorms would see her and only feel stirring rather than rage.

Quite the surprise would be awaiting her, then, when she arrived at Shiz University a week later and stood in the back of the meeting room, where all the Amas were meeting and deciding that their precious dolls shall room together.

Elphaba found the whole thing to be quite pretentious, and the moment she had arrived, disgusted eyes had been glaring at her, silently telling her that she had no place among them, but the silver lining was lying in the fact that they didn't attack her. It caused a minor feeling of elation, somewhere deep within her, that she could at least pass as a human in front of everyone here. Also, she was grateful for the chaos and commotion around them, since she suspected that was part of the reason why no one made a scene about her.

"Shall I invite…" came a regal-sounding accented voice. "the Thropp Third Descending, of Nest Hardings, Elphaba?"

Elphaba froze. What was that title? What had that meant? It made no sense to her. Of course, Nessa had told her about the Eminency, but Elphaba had never considered herself to be in line for it. Certainly, Frex would not have placed her under that title. Perhaps Nanny…

"Elphaba?"

Being jerked into action, Elphaba felt like a walking stick as she rigidly approached a fishlike woman with baubles and hoops creating her person. Beside her, a beautiful blonde girl stood, looking frantic and explaining something to the older woman. That is, until her blue eyes set on the approaching beanstalk, and then she went pale.

Horror. Disgust. Unadulterated loathing. All of this played on that pretty little face, and more, in the span of just a second when those eyes laid on the green target. Elphaba wasn't sure whether to laugh or not, but she wanted to. She heard Nessa's voice in the back of her head.

"Don't…don't do that," Nessa had cringed after her sister had laughed. "You cackle. You don't laugh. Don't do it. Just… Try to avoid laughing, alright? At least until you establish your place. We don't want people to attack you because your laughter is so terrifying."

And so, Elphaba restrained herself. Her mouth remained a thin line as she approached the two with as much dignity as she could muster.

"A distant cousin of the Thropp family line, closer in kin to the great Peerless Thropp, having arrived in Munchkinland just one year prior after an escape from Ev," the woman read aloud, irking Elphaba just a tad. "How fascinating for us all, Miss Elphaba. We shall look forward to hearing tales of exotic climes and times. Miss Galinda and Miss Elphaba, here are your keys. You may take room twenty-two on the second floor."

The moment they were dismissed, one of the keys was snatched away by Miss Galinda and the girl sped off in a fit. Elphaba, on the other hand, simply took the other key, fixed her gaze on the ground, and headed off in the same direction after grabbing her two small luggage bags (as she had deigned to take two to fit her books).

The dormitories were not hard to navigate, but Elphaba almost got lost at least three times, as she kept getting stuck in her reveries about this place. She could hardly believe that she was in Shiz University now, with a room key in her hand, preparing to start classes in just a couple days. The people in the meeting room hadn't exactly treated her with respect, but they didn't cause her any harm, either. _Stirring_.

Shiz University was everything that Elphaba had hoped it to be, and more. Over the two years in which she learned, slowly and surely, how to live, it became clear to her rather early on that knowledge was far more important than any God in whose name she may or may not have been created. If she were to gain knowledge, she would have more power than her Creator. She could never be like him, her God. So she had to contend with being more powerful than him, with having something that he didn't have. Knowledge.

When she did finally arrive at room twenty-two, she was not surprised to find that her blonde roommate had already arrived. Elphaba swung open the door and brought her two bags inside.

One of the beds had already been claimed by pink fluff-lined bags – the one closer to the window. That was perfectly fine, Elphaba thought, perfectly fine by her.

"I've claimed my side of the room, and you may do whatever you wish with yours," came Miss Galinda's overwhelmingly confident voice. "Just keep your awful fingers away from my possessions, and do not speak to me, and we will have no problems."

Elphaba was suddenly very amused by that, but she contained her mirth to a single smirk, recalling Nessa's warning about her laughter. Must not provoke the spitting little blonde to an act of violence.

"Although I do not see the problem with my fingers which are so-called 'awful'," Elphaba began bravely, ignoring the piercing gaze that set itself upon her, "I guarantee you that your possessions are far too, well, pink for my hands to touch anyway."

"My possessions are valuable, and expensive! Your awful fingers are, well, _green_!"

And so, the needle is found in the haystack. Of course, it was Elphaba's discoloration that caused the stigma against her. She should have known. Wordlessly, she began to unpack her two bags, hanging three out of the four drab dresses she owned (for the fourth was on her) in the closet and placing a good stack of twelve or so books in the shelf provided for her.

Her books were her prized possessions – the only things she really called her own. She had collected them slowly. Her first book was one she had stolen from the library on accident, after almost being caught by the night guardwoman and running out of the library without dropping the book. Her second was a torn one that she had found in a dumpster. Her third, she had found in an alley. Those were the three she owned when she came to live with the Thropps. Any books thereafter were gifts, mostly from Nanny with the occasional one from Nessa.

After the books were set up on their shelf, Elphaba ventured into the bathroom to set her three oils – one for her skin, one for shampoo, and one for burns – in the medicine cabinet. By the time she was done with all of her unpacking, Galinda was still in the middle of hers, pulling frilly dress after frilly dress out of her many oversized bags.

By Oz, Elphaba couldn't understand why one tiny person needed so much clothing – or shoes, for that matter, she thought as she gazed upon the blonde's rather stuffed shoe rack. The blonde was lucky the overfilled rack was not leaning forward like Elphaba thought it ought to do.

Classes began in two days, and the green girl was looking forward to them, to say the least. She was ready to study from professionals, from people who had all of the knowledge she sought. These people, to her, were idols. They were the ones who were going to teach her what society was like – not her fellow classmates. Society didn't matter, Nessa had said at one point.

"Society doesn't matter. Society won't see you; they'll see your skin. What matters is what's inside," were her exact words. Elphaba wouldn't lie and say she completely understood the sentiment, but she accepted it, and she trusted Nessa.

She remembered very, very little from the day she had first come to life, but she did remember Nessa's gentle smile, Nanny's sweet voice. The two went hand in hand, she thought. They were the first people to treat her like something other than an abomination. That sort of bond, you never truly forgot. That was something that ran deeper than skin, or blood. Elphaba wouldn't pretend to understand it, but it was there.

The next day, however, was excruciating for one particular green girl. She mostly stayed in her bed and studied the textbooks she'd need for class. She was amazed at the bed itself. It wasn't anything special, but it was a whole lot better than sleeping on the floor of the attic with nothing but a singular pillow, or being curled up against a dumpster in some alleyway. These things had become the normal for her; getting treated like she was nothing was just expected. This courtesy that the Shiz staff provided, then, did not go unnoticed by her.

Miss Galinda had been out of the room for the majority of the day, and when she was inside, she fiddled with her makeup or sketched on an artpad, but made no sound. That was all fine by Elphaba. If the pretty blonde girl thought she was so much better than her, then so be it. Who was she to argue?

But yes, the day had been painfully slow, waiting in anticipation for her first class tomorrow, her first chance at being part of society's learning, of being an actual _someone_ rather than a fiend, a monster, a green freak. A beanstalk, a grasshopper, a cabbage. Names had already been flying around the campus, but Elphaba did her best to ignore them, like Nessa had said.

 **XXX**

Unhappy about her roommate and unwilling to spend any more time with the girl than absolutely necessary, Galinda had taken it upon herself to head out to the buttery early in the morning and try to make friends. She had come to Shiz to rise up in the social hierarchies, to be more than her parents were. Granted, they were wealthy, but she didn't want wealthy. She wanted _loaded_ , and she didn't want to have to lift a finger to do so.

On the other hand, she was hoping she'd maybe pick up a few things about architecture at this university. Who knew?

During her morning at the buttery, Galinda had met the Misses Pfannee of Pfann Hall, Shenshen of the Minkos, and Milla of Center Munch. They were gloriously oversmug girls with a knack for foul nicknames and a gossipy nature that left a bad taste in the mouth. Galinda loved them.

Of course, their personalities were far from desirable. Galinda would much prefer to talk to more civilized beings, but these girls, she knew, these girls were going to be her ticket. Maybe… Maybe she'd visit one of their houses' over winter break, and maybe she'd meet an inherently loaded uncle with a handsome face to boot, and maybe, just maybe, she might win him over, and be married right off the bat, free to study architecture at Shiz without having to worry about money or her mother's criticisms or dealing with, really, anything. It would also be nice, she thought, if he wasn't too clingy or forward.

Upon the return to her room late in the evening, Galinda found Miss Elphaba in exactly the same position she had left her: hunched over a book with her bony knees drawn to her chest, reading. The book was being held rather close to her face with one hand while the other idly curled itself in her hair. Carefully, beautifully, like a ballerina twirling and performing pirouettes and majestic leaps, that hideous finger, so impossibly thin and bony, like the exoskeleton of a beetle's leg, wrapped itself in that hair, and then let the hair spring free. Not once did the hair keep the curl. Miss Elphaba's hair formed a curtain around her face, so Galinda just saw the long, hatchet green nose peeking out into the fold of the book she was so enamored by. That hair, however, had an almost shiny quality to it. Were she not talking about Miss Elphaba here, Galinda might've even called it gorgeous. But this was Miss Elphaba, and if anything, Miss Elphaba was far from gorgeous. Even more accurate, she was the antithesis of beauty. And yet, Galinda found herself drawn in so unusually by that shimmering dark hair, resembling coffee spun into threads – black silk, fine and refined – night rain, invisible to the eye in its mysterious power. It was so enchanting, perhaps most of all because of the contrast of that hair and the hideous face it crowned.

Galinda did not say a word to Miss Elphaba that night – would not. Why did the green girl deserve her attention?

And yet, as she settled down in her bed, clothed in her velvet lavender pajamas after washing up in the restroom, readying herself to let her creative juices flow with a sketchpad on her lap and a pencil in her hand, Galinda found her eyes being drawn back to that waterfall of dark hair, spun across one impossibly bony shoulder and falling in waves down her spiny back. Such a contrast, she thought.

With her pencil, she began to draw, constructing, beam by beam, a house. A nice house, with a wide, overhanging roof and pillars. A home that someone could proudly call home. It was three stories tall, with diagonal siding on the top half that faded into a soft pink base for the first floor, a style that had only become popular in modern Wittican culture. She drew a fence surrounding it, with crossing iron bars that each ended in a three-sided arrow, sharpened at the end. The gate was smaller, more conservative. It was made of steel rather than iron, and decorated with steel designs of vines and flowers.

The entirety of her life, Galinda had so despised her mother's values. Part of her had always kind of wanted to learn, but it was her mother that taught her instead to spend hours on her appearance every day, who loaded her with money and set her in a fashion outlet, who followed her around, making sure the clothes she selected were beautiful and uncomfortable. This wasn't who Galinda wanted to be, but it was who her mother made her be. As a byproduct of years of grilling, she had come to scrutinize clothing and faces and makeup and awful green pigmentations as second nature, because that's all she ever knew around her mother. It was natural to want to gossip about who did what and who did who, because that's what her mother did around her. It was a sort of manipulation, Galinda knew, but she did see part of the value to it. When she married a loaded man, she could be free to study whatever she wanted. She wouldn't have to lift a finger. That was why she did it – why she still spent hours on her appearance, thousands on her clothing, and her sanity with the Misses Pfannee, Shenshen, and Milla. For her future. For that shining moment where a man would take care of all of her worries.

For now, at least, that's what she knew she wanted. Her mother's values, however manipulative, did serve a purpose, and they would get her to that twinkling endpoint. Galinda saw no reason to change now, not when what she did was all for her future.

 **XXX**

The first day of classes approached faster than Galinda would have liked but much slower than Elphaba preferred. In the morning, both were awake and out of bed a full three hours before classes started – Galinda because she needed to do her makeup perfectly and pick a flawless first-day-of-classes outfit, and Elphaba because she simply couldn't sleep in the anticipation for the lectures.

Elphaba gathered a simple navy blue frock in her arms and headed towards the bathroom. She passed by Miss Galinda, but didn't spare a word for the arrogant blonde. Inside the bathroom, she stripped down, briefly pausing to examine herself in the mirror.

Really, she wasn't pretty. Even aside from her unnatural skin, her face was pointed and sharp. Her ribs were prominent, and lined with scars from where skin was pulled over them and sewn together. She was bone-thin, and she looked almost like a skeleton with a blanket tucked snugly into it. There was also that slight discoloration on her chest from that first day she was alive – she didn't remember a whole lot from that day, nor the incident itself, only that it involved water. And then scars from where she had been beaten with a bookend (another thing she did not remember), pelted with rocks (she had some recollection), beaten with a flashlight. Burn scars on the back of her hands from when she had stepped out from the library when it was raining and held her hands out from under the overhang to see what the sparkle in the air was. Her eyes were dark, and expressionless, and her nose was awful and sharp.

For a moment, Elphaba was horrified by herself. Was this truly how she looked? It had to be. The only thing she saw that she admired was the slight rise and fall of her chest – her own breathing, shown to the world, declaring proudly that _I'm here. I'm alive._

Snapping out of her reverie, she retrieved her cleaning oils from the medicine cabinet and meticulously applied a light coating to her skin, and then rubbed some of the shampoo into her hair. Once she was finished, she dressed in her shapeless dress and headed back out into the bedroom.

Miss Galinda shot her an odd look when she emerged. Elphaba quirked one eyebrow up daringly, but the blonde just gave her head a little shake and returned her gaze to her vanity, which she stared into as she applied some powder or another to her face.

Having nothing else to do, Elphaba perched on her bed and held one of her textbooks for the classes she hadn't even started yet, and began to hungrily review the pages of it. The text was blurry, so she had to hold it closer to her face. Perhaps that was something everyone had to do, she thought. Many people just hid it because it was an embarrassing sight.

 _Nothing to embarrass me_ , she thought, _for I already am an embarrassment._ She wanted to cackle then, but in recalling Nessa's words, she forced herself to hold it back. Certainly, Miss Galinda would really not want to hear that.

Speaking of the frilly blonde roommate, she stood from her vanity and headed into the bathroom, emerging a full ten minutes later in an elaborately simply pink and yellow dress, with a pink headband within her hair. With twenty minutes left to kill, she sat delicately on her bed and once again began to scratch graphite in her little artpad.

Elphaba wondered, briefly, fleetingly, what it is that the girl was drawing. What subject could be so fascinating? One time, Elphaba herself had tried to draw, with some paper she found in the house and one of Nanny's pens, but she found herself to be not so adept at it, and her bird was misshapen and poor.

"Miss Elphaba, are you going to continue to stare at me, or actually say something?"

The green girl was unphased by being caught and called out, and she simply quirked one eyebrow right back up and stared levelly into those blue eyes. "A similar way, I'm sure, to the way that you observed me last night. If you didn't speak then, why need I speak now? Is there a double-standard I'm unaware of? Please, enlighten me, Miss Galinda."

The blonde, on the other hand, was completely flustered once she learned that her observations last night had not gone unnoticed. She stood, pressing her artpad and pencil into the bed firmly. Her face was a deep rose color, and she floundered for a few moments, mouth trying to form adequate words as she pointed a finger angrily at her roommate. "You – Well – You – "

"Yes? Words would be nice."

"You are incorrigible!" Miss Galinda suddenly spat, steaming from her ears.

"Oh, that's a five-dollar word," Elphaba cackled – she couldn't help it this time. Galinda's face became horrified at the noise, but if possible, more snotty, too. "And here I was thinking you were just an airhead who couldn't accurately give me a definition for _chthonian_. Clearly, I must be mistaken. My apologies, dear roomie," she smiled in a sickly sweet manner.

Miss Galinda huffed, obviously deciding not to grace her with a response. She slung her over-the-shoulder bag onto her arm, stuffed a couple books and lipsticks into it, as well as her artpad and pencil, slipped her feet into two-inch heels, and stomped out of the room with her usual air of superiority causing much more of a ruckus than was normal.

Elphaba waited until she had left before she burst out into full-blown laughter, clutching her sides and wiping at her eyes to keep from crying out of the mirth she felt. Really, Miss Galinda was something else!

Once she had recovered, Elphaba chuckled and packed her own bag and left the room, as well, not even bothering to lock it. After all, the only thing she valued in there were her books, and she was certain no one would want to steal those. Miss Galinda's makeup and outfits, though… Those looked expensive, very expensive. It was such a shame, then, that the blonde was so nasty. If she had been a bit nicer, then perhaps Elphaba would have remembered to show some concern for her stuff. Alas, that was not the case.

Her first class was a couple buildings down from Crage Hall – a history class with one Professor Terristry. Upon arrival, Elphaba casually ignored the looks and glares sent her way, and took her seat in the front of the class, recalling Nessa's lessons to act as if she belonged in society. That was the way to get people to not attack her.

And so, Elphaba did, wasting no time on worrying what others thought of her, or those whispers behind her that she was certain were about her, and instead pulled out her history textbook and a notepad and a pen, readying the third thing in her hand above the second and looking up to the wise teacher eagerly.

The class passed quickly, and with it, the rest of her classes. The highlight of her day had, in fact, been, when she stepped into her biology class with Doctor Dillamond – an Animal! Who would have thought? – and saw her familiar blonde roommate. The look on the girl's face was priceless. As it turned out, the two of them shared a total of three classes together.

Looking back on it, Elphaba wasn't sure quite what she was expecting from her classes. They were perhaps, a lot more mundane than she was hoping for, and in them, she learned the basics of each subject, which she had already taught to herself from her textbooks. It was slightly disappointing, then, but the thrill of university did not leave her.

Her favorite class thus far was definitely biology. Not only was Doctor Dillamond absolutely astounding in the breadth of his knowledge, hands down one of the most intelligent professors in the university, but also, the subject matter itself was fascinating. Elphaba wondered if all of this knowledge was what Frexspar had used in creating her. His journals had been a mess, and she had come to accept that his creating her was something of a miracle considering how little he knew about this subject – he just got lucky. But this biology, these things she was learning about the cell, she still had those. She had stayed after class to examine a swab from the inside of her cheek under a microscope, much to Doctor Dillamond's delightful confusion, and confirmed that she did, indeed, have both cells and DNA within those cells.

 _This is what I have_ , she realized. These cells, this DNA, proved that she was alive, that she was a creature, that she was human. The entirety of the subject of biology, learning it, had become almost cathartic for her – it calmed her down, reassured her, and taught her.

After her classes were over, Elphaba had decided to clear her head a little bit by taking a walk around the Shiz University grounds. The grass was thick and gorgeous, and then trees hung low over the heads of the students. The grounds themselves were huge, the campus much bigger than Elphaba had been expecting. She was amazed by it all. She felt like a child, taking in the world, the way she had taken it in three years ago, when she had stopped running, haven forgotten why she had been running in the first place, and looked up to see a low weeping willow tree, its leaves mourning over a small swampy pond in the wet marshland of Quadling Country. Her feet had been so severely burnt, she didn't even feel them anymore, but she saw that weeping willow, and all she felt was bliss.

As she walked these pathways of Shiz University, Elphaba could almost forget about all of the people casting her disgusted glances, whispering about her behind her back, not quietly enough for her to not know it was about her, but too quietly for her to know exactly what they were saying.

No, nature was plenty enough to distract her from the harsh cruelty of the human race. She enjoyed the campus, in all of its entirety, but paid little attention to the buildings right now. All she cared about was the nature. She envied it – its ability to simply exist, without question, without care. The ability of others to merely exist in a similar manner. It was only the unnatural that would envy the natural.

A deafening crack filled the air, and Elphaba glanced up worriedly. Without her having even noticed, the clouds had grown dark and heavy with rain. Feeling a brief moment of panic, she sped towards the nearest building, closing herself within the doors just before the first spurt of liquid death tore itself from the clouds.

She felt lucky that the warning thunder had sounded, some part of nature almost accepting her, cautioning her that another one of her peculiarities was about to be exploited if she didn't hurry into cover. Grateful, she turned to examine which building she had wandered into.

Only to have her heart begin to flutter in her chest at the sight.

 _There were ranks upon ranks of shelves, lined up like soldiers readying themselves for battle, bearing their battle scars and their weapons in the form of hundreds upon thousands of books between them all, readied for the war upon Ignorance and Illiteracy. These soldiers were prepared to defend their knowledge and their home, the world they carried within, and all of those who had the yearning to reach out and access this knowledge, but not damage it, for those with the yearning felt no violence – just hope. She had tried, so hard, just to find a place. She had been cast out of whatever hole she had crawled from, and then hurt by those awful people in that town, those red-skinned and white-skinned devils, and all she wanted now was a home. As she stared upon these soldiers, mighty and unrelenting, she couldn't help but feel that she might have found one, at long last._

A heavy shudder ran through Elphaba, like vibrations down her spine as she saw now, a new army, a new force of knowledge, ready to open itself up to her and envelop her in its musty, wonderfully musty, arms. It seemed almost stupid, in retrospect, to not have expected there to be other libraries in the world, but she recalled seeing that painted plain sign – _Quov's Ozian Books_ – and hadn't ever considered that maybe she'd have another home, maybe there'd been a place just like it.

 _Shiz Library_.

The words were along the inside of the building, on a quarter-wall overhang above the front desk, which was occupied only by a dozing woman in purple, ruling effortlessly over her kingdom and commanding her army without lifting a single finger.

A new home.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: Alright, guys, I wanna start off by apologizing profusely on behalf of my delay for this chapter. My laptop broke sometime in January, and, well, money's tight, you know? I had to save up to fix it, and just got it back a week ago, and I have been writing quite a bit! This chapter** ** _is_** **a bit of a beast - about 7k words for the entire chapter, and as my outlines tell, next chapter will also be around the same length.**

 **I honestly don't know if any of y'all are still reading this, but if so, there's a lot I have planned for this weird little fic - I'm not giving up on it yet! There's still more Gelphie to burn ;)**

 **Remember that reviews keep a writer writing! I love reading all of your little comments and thoughts about my "fever-dream" fanfic 3**

After class that day, Galinda had been slightly surprised to discover that her horrid green roommate was not in the room, but not at all was she aggrieved over it. If anything, she was pleased not to have to look at that revolting skin, that unattractive face, that exoskeletal physiology anymore. At least, not for now. But when the girl didn't return at all during the night – a peaceful night spent sketching by Galinda – she felt as if some God, or perhaps Lurline, had taken pity on her undesirable situation and deigned upon giving her a break.

She felt so odd towards her new roommate – equally disgusted and… intrigued. If she'd be bold enough to admit it. There was some sort of history to that creature that Galinda found her curiosity piqued by. She wished the curiosity would go away – she wished she could settle on a plain _loathing_ for the green girl rather than this in-between state, like a young boy felt approaching a decomposed body that he found both thrilling and horrifying.

One thing was for certain, Galinda knew. Whatever curiosity she might feel for her roommate would immediately be ruined the moment Elphaba opened her mouth and spat at her with that snake's tongue, that venom. It was as if the girl was almost as determined to scare off any people as her skin was.

And the next day, she still didn't show up at first. Mind, she attended her classes, but Galinda didn't see her again in Room 22 until late in the evening. Until then, Galinda had felt a flutter of hope – perhaps, Elphaba had taken up and moved to another room, or one of the larger dormitories. Perhaps, she had spoken with Morrible, and gotten herself transferred. Whatever it was, one blonde Frottican was glad of it.

Until the familiar green tower opened the door and stepped inside, lugging a heavy-looking bag.

"And here I was, beginning to think I was lucky enough to be rid of you," Galinda sniffed, unimpressed with the sudden appearance and overall in a foul mood now because of it.

Elphaba grunted as she slung her bag onto her bed and began to extract at least a dozen books from it. She sat, cross-legged, on the bed, her feet curling outwards. The skin on the bottoms of her feet, though Galinda couldn't see much of it, looked almost black in the lighting. "I'm like a familiar moss, you know," Elphaba stated nonchalantly. "Or a wart that you never can get to go away for long. Near impossible to remove, painful if attempted, and always returning with an admirable determination."

With a scoff, Galinda turned away from the girl, looking at the fire she had made in the fireplace. It was small, but comforting. Although the nights were not particularly freezing yet, autumn was fast approaching, earlier than usual, she suspected, and it was a small slice of home to hear the crackling of the fire.

Galinda didn't notice when Elphaba stopped sorting through her books and began staring intensely at the fire. She only noticed when the green girl headed towards it, almost gravitating like a moth to the flame, light on her bare feet, tiptoeing like a cat. Galinda had half a mind to ask the girl if she even owned a pair of shoes – if she did, Galinda had yet to see them – but that look on that girl's face, that look of pure innocence and curiosity, silenced her, banished her to a confused state of mind.

The air in the room had become constrained, and somehow colder than it was five minutes ago. Galinda almost couldn't find oxygen, she was occupied with this look that Elphaba wore, and she couldn't even figure why.

The green girl got closer to the fire, and slowly extended an arm, verdant fingers stretching towards the fire, intending to envelop the fingers in his flaming kisses. Elphaba paused, contemplating the heat that the fire gave off, and then thrusted her hand towards the flames.

The moment of impact was surreal throughout the room. It was as if Room 22 had been placed into a trance, some dream-like state by an unforgiving demon, and now, this impact point of a green hand hitting flames was a catalyst for the chaos that ensued, the trance over the room shattering and oxygen returning to the air.

"You absolute fool!" Galinda cried as Elphaba hissed in pain and held her burnt hand towards her. It hadn't been held there long enough to the flames to truly cause damage, but long enough to teach her a lesson.

Galinda scrambled off her bed and hurriedly approached the other girl, unceremoniously plopping onto the ground next to where she knelt. "Are you stupid? Are you absolutely stupid? Why would you do that? Now the room's going to smell awful, like burnt skin but more disgusting, because of that awful hue."

Elphaba drew into herself, visibly shrinking from the criticizing blonde. Her eyes had grown dark and wide, and she didn't look directly into blue eyes, but rather a spot on the floor where Galinda's face was in the corner of her vision.

"Honestly, how could you be that ridiculously moronic as to stick your hand into fire? Do you not know what fire is, what it does? What, were you born yesterday or something? Just give me your damn hand, let me take a look at it before you ruin something else, you filthy creature."

The blonde reached out to snatch a green wrist, but for the first time in her life, Elphaba retaliated.

"Shut up!" she _snarled_ , hand violently withdrawing from the pale one reaching for it.

It was then that Galinda noticed the other girl's trembling, the way she wasn't looking at her, how heavy her breathing was, how tense she had become. It was a defensive posture, and Elphaba looked like a wounded animal that had been backed into a corner. It occurred to Galinda just how vulnerable her roommate was here. How much control Galinda had asserted over her, without even really meaning to. It was as if she owned her, she could manipulate her however she wanted to.

It then occurred to her that perhaps _she shouldn't want to_ manipulate Elphaba. And, as she reflected on it, she felt sick at the notion of manipulating anyone so directly. Galinda's hand, which had reached out before but was stopped by the sudden defense, snatched itself back to its owner. Galinda looked at Elphaba levelly, who finally met her eyes. In a bold move, Elphaba quirked one eyebrow up, and Galinda gave in.

With a frustrated sigh, Galinda got up and marched over to her bed, deciding to completely ignore her stupid roommate for the remainder of the evening, and perhaps even for the remainder of the week.

 **XXX**

It was thrilling, that the same cause should produce such opposite effects! As Elphaba lay in her bed and cradled her burnt hand – earlier, she had gone into the bathroom to apply some of her burn oil, and that had helped ease the pain tremendously – she couldn't help but think back on the fire, that's what Miss Galinda had called it. The whole idea of it was exhilarating, Elphaba thought. She felt the warmth, comforting and sweet, until it lashed out at her and left her with raw marks. She was more fascinated by the fire than really upset over being burnt.

Initially, she had felt shameful and raw, and then when Miss Galinda attacked her like that, and kept on attacking her… She lashed out. Briefly and limitedly, yes, but it was still the first time she had ever defended herself. She had felt cornered and hurt, and Miss Galinda was only feeding the hate she felt in that moment for, really, herself. Who could blame her for lashing out?

In a way, she thought, Miss Galinda was almost like fire. She amused Elphaba to no end in her own frilly way, how she got so flustered during their arguments, how she was obviously materialistic. It was amusing. And yet, when you got too close, she had a bite as well as a bark. She could be cold, and cruel. Although Elphaba had heard Miss Galinda gossip about her on many an occasion, it was never as cruel as it was… Well, Miss Galinda was trying too hard to fit into the popular crowd, and what she gossiped about made her friends giggle, but didn't penetrate underneath Elphaba's thick green skin.

It wasn't her fault, she thought, if she didn't know what fire was. After all, she had only been alive for three years now, and almost two of those years had been spent in Quadling Country, the third spent mostly in the attic of the house, for it was there that Frexspar would leave her alone.

Even as she thought herself into a stupor, willing sleep to come upon her, Elphaba knew that fire had had some sort of impact on her today. She couldn't care less about the burn on her hand, but… Now she knew that she wasn't the only thing that was both one thing and the opposite. While she was life out of death, the fire was pain out of warmth. It made her wonder about her comparison with Miss Galinda and the fire, and if there were, then, any comparisons to be made between her and Miss Galinda.

Before she could ponder that any longer, her mind shut itself off and she slipped into a sleep.

 **XXX**

The rest of the week passed much like the first day – classes were interesting, but basic, and Elphaba spent most of her time outside of them studying her class textbooks and reading about politics, religion, and Oz in the library. When she saw Miss Galinda, it was either in passing or mutual ignorance of the other's presence. The one problem that had presented itself to her was thus: food.

For the week, Elphaba had volunteered to pick the vegetables in the garden for the buttery, and pilfered enough to keep herself fed – it wasn't a job she was being paid for, so she figured her hard work earned her _something_. In her readings, she had discovered the basics of economy, which followed as: work equals money.

Money buys food.

Elphaba had deigned earlier this Saturday that she would try to earn herself a job this weekend, since she had no classes over these two days. It was a perfect opportunity to keep herself out of line of her petty roommate. Although these past few days had been normal, they'd also been strained. Both of the occupants of Room 22 hadn't said a word since the fire incident on Wednesday. Elphaba swore that the temperature in the room dropped ten degrees when the blonde girl would step into it.

Elphaba had since learned the name of the pompous woman who had assigned her to Galinda's room and ama – Madame Morrible, something just as pompous as she – and decided that perhaps this Madame Morrible would know where one could find employment on the campus. Her feet padded lightly and unfeelingly across the pavement as she headed in the direction of Morrible's office, something that had been pointed out to her by Doctor Dillamond in response to her question about it.

Over the week, Elphaba had grown a little closer to Doctor Dillamond. She exceeded in his class, and he always welcomed her to run her own little experiments after and before classes. She did. She would collect leaves from trees and flower petals and examine them, compare them to her own cells, to Doctor Dillamond's. If she had a way to get a piece of DNA from a person who was normally-colored and human, not Animal… Maybe she could prove that she really wasn't that different. She could, potentially, prove her own validity.

Madame Morrible's office was situated in the main office building, which Elphaba had never been in before today. It was stately, she thought, and overly formal, but she had never paid much attention to the architecture around her. Madame Morrible's office was nestled deep a few doors in, but having received the directions, Elphaba had no problem with finding it.

A confident verdant hand knocked on the door once, twice. She heard a slight tinkling sound from inside, like expensive china, and then that overly-recognizably regal voice rang out; "Come in."

Slowly, with a touch of nervousness beginning to seep into her mind, Elphaba did, opening the door and stepping inside, delicately closing the room off before she approached the desk. On the other side of the desk, Madame Morrible sat in a chair almost as _extra_ as she was. Hoops and bangles were attached to the sides of the chair, though at first glance, they might as well have been attached to Madame Morrible, judging by how many she wore. Her lips were constantly pursed in a fish-like manner, and her narrowed eyes with black irises were the opposite of welcome. The gauntness of her cheeks tied off this Carp look she wore – well, that and the fishy smell about her.

"Ah, Miss Elphaba. A bright young lady you are, I hear. Is there something I can do for you, dear?"

Her voice rubbed Elphaba the wrong way, even if her words were kind and formal. Also, sort of informal. The paradox added to Elphaba's agitation. "I've come with a question, Madame. I was hoping you'd perhaps have an answer."

Madame Morrible's lips pursed a little more as she set down the cup of tea that was in her pale hand. "Of course, dear. Please, take a seat." Feeling as if she was somehow signing away… Well, she didn't actually own much, but signing away something important, Elphaba took the seat. "Would you like a cup of tea?"

No, Elphaba figured, that would not be a good idea. She remembered, back in that little house in Nest Hardings with Frex and Nessa and Nanny and Shell, she had once tried a sip of tea, to see if she could drink it. Really, it was Nanny's hypothesis, and Nessa had worried that Elphaba's mouth would get awfully burned. The tea was cooled enough so they knew that any burning that occurred would not be the fault of the temperature, and when Elphaba took a sip, it had been tiny, as instructed by Nanny. Her tongue had turned red with the burn, though it was diluted enough, Elphaba thought, not to severely damage her. Fortunately, as she learned from Nanny that day, the mouth was the quickest-healing part of the body, and within a couple days, she was fine again.

"No thank you."

"Polite," Madame Morrible smiled, and the sight of it was ever more unnerving. This woman had an air about her that Elphaba didn't think she liked all that much. "That's quite alright. My tea is brewed rather strong. I've found that I tend to enjoy the more bitter aspects of things. A personal preference, really."

Elphaba suddenly found it very hard to speak. _The more bitter aspects_. Did that have some sort of double meaning that Elphaba wasn't comprehending? She grew fearful of this woman, in a very short time, and it took an effort to force her lips to curl up at the ends with a smile when she truly wanted to grimace. "My question?" she asked, having to clear her throat to get the words out.

"Ah, yes," Madame Morrible smirked. "Is there something I can help you with?"

"I was hoping," Elphaba admitted. "You see; I find myself in want of employment. Do you, perhaps, know of anywhere that might be hiring?"

Those pale pink – the color of death, Elphaba thought – lips twitched in thought, and an almost imperceptible, unreadable glint entered those beady eyes. "What a question. I'm sure there are shops around in Shiz that would be in need of help, but I fear, you might be a bit too… _bright_ for their needs." Was that a backhanded insult? It was nestled deep in a faux-compliment, and the tone was so unreadable that Elphaba couldn't be sure.

"I'm certain I could make good in a job, Madame."

"Yes, you're quite the hard worker, as your teachers have told me thus far. It's only been a week, of course, so things may change." A pause. "They do say you don't do very well with others, though."

"I can. If I'm given the chance, I can." Why did it feel like she was trying to prove herself to Morrible?

"Indeed," Morrible scrutinized her. "I've no doubts in your abilities. In fact, I actually have been debating hiring an assistant. Just someone to, you know, sort through my papers, organize files, and such. Very basic organizational jobs."

Elphaba felt a glimmer of hope, ignoring the ugly feeling in her gut at the prospect of working for someone such as Madame Morrible. "Perhaps you would be so kind as to consider me, then. I'm a good worker, Madame. I work fast, too."

"An assistant needs to have a sharp appearance."

Ah, that killed it. Elphaba frowned. "Is it because of my skin? Madame, I was made like this, and there's no way to reverse it or anything, though I've tried. What do you suggest? I'd find a dragon and sell my legs to it for a chance to be a normal-"

"Miss Elphaba, please."

She stopped, looking at the fishy woman.

"I was not referring to your skin, but rather, your attire. As long as your skin is kept clean, I wouldn't rather care for it being green, or white, or even purple or red. Clothing, however, speaks volumes. That is something that your roommate, the lovely Miss Galinda, knows well. I don't want an assistant who looks as if she's wearing a bag, who looks as if she's homeless. I want an assistant that looks proud to be my assistant."

Elphaba's brows furrowed a little in confusion. "So, you want me to buy more proper clothing?"

"And some shoes, too, might be a nice investment."

With a frown, Elphaba looked down at her feet. She had never actually owned a pair of shoes, and she was so used to walking barefoot that it really didn't bother her any. She never thought she'd need a pair of shoes.

"Now, if that's all, Miss Elphaba, I've a meeting to attend. Good luck on your job hunt," Madame Morrible smiled wickedly and moved one bony finger in the direction of the door, indicating silently that Elphaba'd better leave.

And so she did, not wasting time but retaining her dignity with a raised chin as she ventured out of the main office building and headed back towards Crage Hall.

She was grateful, upon reaching Room 22 within Crage Hall, to find that Miss Galinda was absent, for Elphaba had much to brood about, and brooding, she found, was most effective in the silence and security of one's own person. It was interesting, that Madame Morrible had made the comment about her not working well with others. As far as she could remember, she hadn't had to work with anyone in any of her classes thus far besides the teacher, who she always got along with, so she was left to wonder if that comment was something Morrible had made up, or perhaps Morrible had been truthful, but her professors had gathered the information merely out of observance of how other students avoided her. Regardless, it was a little irritating that she should be judged so harshly before she was even given a chance to prove herself regarding what she was being judged about.

Additionally, she wondered why shoes made such a big deal to Madame Morrible. Of course, other people wore them, but she had never really seen the point to them. From what she had read in history books, their ancestors used to walk barefoot all the time, for shoes back then were irrelevant and unrequired. Why should it be any difference now?

What really irked Elphaba about it was the fact that, in order to attain shoes, she would need to have money. However, in order to get money, she needed a job. And the job, as she saw, could only be attained if she had shoes. Granted, she could go to some of the shops in Shiz, but Madame Morrible had a point – if people reacted so awfully to her when she wasn't even bothering them, what type of damage could she do to the reputation of a restaurant, or diner, or store? People would avoid the venue like the plague, if only to avoid her "contagious" green condition. If Madame Morrible didn't care about her skin, then she was the best option any green person in Oz had. And, in being the only green person thus discovered in Oz, Elphaba decided that it was her right to take that opportunity. Only, without the job, she could not get the money, or the shoes required to earn herself the job.

An elaborate catch-22 presented itself to her, and Elphaba became wholly frustrated with the entire situation.

As she glared at the wall opposite her bed, it occurred to Elphaba that she had been neglecting a promised responsibility, and she nearly jumped as she remembered. As she departed from Nessa and Nanny at the bus station, where she would travel to Shiz, Nessa had been reluctant to let her go. She had tried to convince her to stay another year, to become more accustomed to society and people before she plunged herself deep within the cruelest webs of the cruelest and most stressed people alive: college students.

But Elphaba was determined to attend Shiz University this year; Shiz had become, for her, a shining star, a green light at the end of the dock, beckoning her and summoning her into society and humanity. It was her pathway into the world, her golden ticket to her life. She had waited so long for this, ever since she learned to read and found out about university; she couldn't wait another year. She had spent one year in Munchkinland with them already. Hadn't she learned enough? So, she declined Nessa's teary demand, and then the armless girl took another tactic, insisting that Elphaba write to her, at least every week, and tell her what went on, how she was, and how she was fitting into society.

"I want you to promise me," Nessa said, "I want you to promise me you'll write, every month. Every week! I want to know what goes on, and how you adjust. Tell me about your classes, even. And please, please promise me you'll try to make friends. Once the initial shock of your condition wears off, they'll all find you can be a rather charming person. You better promise this all to me, Elphaba Thropp. You better."

Now suddenly enslaved by her sister's request, Elphaba took the welcome distraction and dug through her bag, hoping she had some loose paper somewhere. After finding none loose, she promptly tore a few pages from her notebook and set them flat on her desk. She had to dive back at her bag to dig out a pencil, but once she sat, staring at the paper with the pencil poised above it, she found that she really didn't have anything to say. At least, she wasn't sure what she had to say. Once she started, though, it all flowed out like a river from the base.

 _Dear Nessarose,_

 _I apologize for not writing yet, but this week has been long and trying. It has been good, though. Upon arriving at the campus, I was not pelted with any sort of damaging instrument, which I suppose is a positive sign. I have mostly been occupied with my classes, which, although they are at their most basic level, are astoundingly interesting to me. I've already read three chapters ahead in all of my textbooks, and I could teach it, too, I bet! All jokes aside, though, I am truly enjoying Shiz University. My favorite class this far is life sciences with Doctor Dillamond, who is a brilliant professor. He's a Goat, too!_

 _Did you know about the oppression of the Animals in Oz? I read about it in the Shiz Library, which is definitely my favorite location on campus. It seems silly for me to have thought my library in Quadling Country to be the only one out there, but I think that was just foolish, childish ignorance for the sake of preserving what was the one home I had known. That, too, is foolish, I suppose. This Shiz Library could certainly be my new home, I think._

 _Overall, I have been adjusting to Shiz University, and university life in general, rather well. The campus is beautiful, and I like to take walks in it and ponder my latest research. One thing that has occurred to me is the need for money. See, I have been picking out of the vegetable garden, and saving some aside as payment for my work, but in craving for real food, I discovered that I need money, and in order to attain that, I need work. I have been looking for a job, and found one potential one that claims not to care for my skin condition or spotty background, but the only problem is, the employer insists I require shoes. This is silly, to me, since I've gone three years without shoes, and I have been fine. It has never concerned me before whether I've had them or not. I have a conundrum, though, since in order to get shoes, I need money, which I need work for, which requires the shoes that I need the work to get._

 _I'm working on figuring it all out. Aside from that, really, I've been fine. It's almost thrilling that I haven't been physically beaten yet – I say yet because of the way these people talk about me behind my back. They're not even very good at hiding it, which I find to be absolutely hilarious. If they insist on insulting me, why bother being so discreet about it? I really couldn't care less. But yes, I am enjoying Shiz University._

 _Might I inquire about the welfares of Nanny and Shell? And perhaps, if Frexspar is doing better without my presence? As being present whenever I am present, I have not seen how he acts without my presence. I can't help but be curious about him, and his mannerisms. Is there perhaps anything you could tell me about him sans my presence? Like, how he treats Shell, and you, and Nanny?_

 _The warmest regards to you, Nessarose, my friend. Please do update me with how things are in Munchkinland._

 _Elphaba_

It didn't quite feel right to call Nessa her sister, or even to give herself the last name of the family. Although she had spent the last year of her life with them, they were not family – she didn't even know what family was – and Munchkinland was not her home. That decrepit old house in Nest Hardings was nothing compared to her new library.

She decided she was going to send the letter off in the Shiz postal office later that evening. In the past year, she had made a point to learn about the workings of society, such as what types of buildings did what, careers and positions. She learned a little about politics – aside from the topic of the Eminence, neither Nessa nor Nanny seemed particularly eager to speak about the subject, but they did tell her how the Wizard came in some twenty years ago and uprooted the Ozma regime – and what luxuries and basics were. Things she hadn't figured out while living on her own. However, although they wore shoes, neither Nanny nor Nessa seemed concerned about Elphaba's footwear.

Nanny had taken Elphaba out into society sometimes, protective and scaring off anyone with fearfully malicious intentions, to teach her how to interact with people, how to order food and hold a fork in public, how to act with workers – especially when they reacted badly to the sight of her – and utilize common services.

In spite of all of this, Elphaba couldn't help a small quiver of anxiety at the notion. She'd do it still, and she had interacted with postal workers before, but never alone. She was worried that perhaps one of them would throw a roll of tape at her because of her hideous appearance, undaunted due to the lack of Nanny's piercing gaze, and she wouldn't be able to duck fast enough.

She'd been staring at her paper, but didn't even realize she was doing so until the door to Room 22 opened and a tiny grumbling Frottican stumbled in, kicking her heels off and frumping over to her bed, which she promptly flopped down on her stomach onto.

As if she was being shocked back into reality, Elphaba gathered the papers of her letter to Nessarose and delicately tucked them into a drawer of her desk. She was hyperaware of cold blue eyes watching her as she impulsively straightened out the rest of the area, including removing a piece of paper she had dropped from the ground and depositing it into the trash can beside the writing station.

"What an odd sight, you in this room without a book in your hands."

Miss Galinda's voice was prickly, and judgmentally unkind. When she spoke, it was with no obvious degree of sweetness, but Elphaba was more curious about the fact that Miss Galinda was speaking at all.

She's looking for a fight, Elphaba thought as she ignored her roommate and transitioned over to her own bed. It took a fancying moment for her mind to change to the act of engaging her frilly little roommate. "Contrary to popular belief, Miss Galinda, I do exist outside of reading, and I was not made for the confines of a book, though I do admit to being so charmed by them that I can't fault you for thinking so."

There. Miss Galinda got what she wanted: an argument, a bit of a fight, some bite to counter and a green girl to torment.

"Perhaps you were conceived for reading, and you've never known. Perhaps, in creating you, your parents had the sole idea in mind to craft you within your mother for the purpose of hiding in your musty old books with your contagious green hands."

Something about that comment really set Elphaba off, but she wasn't certain what. That was a lie. She knew exactly what it was that set her off, and that was what Miss Galinda was assuming about her home life, and what Miss Galinda assumed about Elphaba having a family or parents at all.

But of course, any other person in Shiz was born of their mother, conceived on a hot, sweaty night between two lovers that they'd never forget. Of course, any other living being – human or Animal – in Shiz was made of love, of promise and commitment and everything in between that Elphaba didn't understand, could not, for the life of her, understand, because those concepts were not involved in the making of her; nothing was involved in the making of her except possession, obsession, and a wickless candle.

That thought almost physically burned her, and Elphaba couldn't help a wince. She didn't even realize until now that she had been staring at the ground, with a paper from the floor in her hands, one arm halfway extended to throw it away. Galinda was frowning at her with annoyance at her sudden stopping.

But now, back in reality, Elphaba cleared her throat and gave her head a little shake. She carelessly tossed the paper in the trash and gave her roommate a sharp look on the way to her own bed. "I don't see why or whether it matters to you, Miss Galinda, for what purpose I was created, but if your own purpose was to be a silly, spoiled brat who has only a tongue dipped in insults and judgment, then I do say, your creators fully succeeded."

The blonde-framed face quickly grew red then, gently contrasting the perfect golden curls around it. Miss Galinda's mouth opened and closed like a fish, something which Elphaba had seen her do before; it amused the green girl all the same.

"Miss Elphaba, I do believe you've naught a kind bone in your body!" she cried out. "This entire week, you've been nothing but nasty to me and your peers! You've no right to say an unkind word for _my_ temperament when your own is so drastically worse. You must learn to control yourself, Miss Elphaba."

Desperately, Elphaba wanted to point out the harshness of the insults Galinda pelted her with, the night with the fire when Galinda attacked her so cruelly when she'd already been burned in more way than one, the fact that Galinda was always the one to raise her voice. But she didn't, for she recalled so clearly another piece of advice Nessa had given her.

"Now, Elphaba, you need to make sure, no matter how much people may goad you or bait you to lash out, you mustn't. We don't want people to fear you. As you know, fear is what leads to your pain when they become so overwhelmed that they resort to physical violence. You may ward off attacks with your words, but do not attack. Merely defend."

"Is there a difference?" Elphaba asked of her sister, confused about this notion. She couldn't quite understand why Nessa didn't want her to have the same power as her peers. If they could attack her, why couldn't she attack back?

Nessa shot her a hard look. "Of course there is. If I insult you, you can insult me in return, but in moderation. You must watch yourself, so you don't inspire enough anger for such person to act out against you. Use your words for self-defense, not for war. Words have unbelievable power, and if you wield them right, then everything will fall into place around you, and you can balance being alive and being in society without having to worry about either being at risk of crumbling."

And it was for that, for her sister, that Elphaba chose not to respond to the volley of shots from Miss Galinda, who, rather clearly, was far too dense to realize her own faults. But that was quite alright, for Elphaba was plenty astute enough to realize her faults for the both of them, and accommodate them to manipulate Miss Galinda however she chose. Like now. While Elphaba could anger Miss Galinda further, she had chosen instead to push the tiny blonde to an in-between state of anger, where one was too angry to be at peace, but not angry enough to lash out. In this position, she was right where Elphaba wanted her.

Miss Galinda, who was fuming on the other side of the room still, realized that her roommate would not be responding to her insult, and let out her signature huff before disappearing into the bathroom to take a cold shower.

 **XXX**

Absolutely infuriating. Miss Elphaba was absolutely infuriating in the way that she seemed not to care to engage anyone any longer than her attention span would last. Though, that wasn't always a bad thing, as engagement with Miss Elphaba was so frustrating and awful and necessarily syllabic that a conversation with her was never pleasant. And yet, the way that she dropped it off, as if she had simply lost interest in interacting with the other person, was even more hurtful than her awful tone and insults.

Galinda stretched up in the shower, trying to calm herself down after that particular encounter with the notorious green bean. She heard the door open and close outside of the bathroom, and hoped that meant that Elphaba had left, because not only did she insult her, but Miss Elphaba also confused Galinda more than any other specimen had ever confused her before. It was so aggravating!

She couldn't shake the sight of Elphaba almost frantically shoving papers into her desk drawer, no more than she could shake that fearful, defensive look in dark eyes on the night where she had stuck her hand into the fire, like a naïve child.

Miss Elphaba was a mystery, and perhaps the most obnoxious thing was how drawn Galinda was to that mystery; desperately, she wanted to discover more about Miss Elphaba, if only to assuage her own wonderings about the girl. What Madame Morrible had told her about the girl's origin in Ev was only a tantalizing taste of what was sure to be a rather interesting backstory, and in spite of herself, Galinda needed to know. What if Miss Elphaba had been born in a sewer? What if she had lived with elves for years? Things like this could certainly cause danger to Galinda, and so, she deserved a right to know, didn't she?

Once she was done cooling herself off in the shower, she dried her body with a towel and slipped back into her outfit for the day. Something had occurred to her that irked her curiosity ever higher, and she was determined to find out answers about the mysterious cabbage person.

Back out into the main part of the bedroom, now, Galinda recalled how Elphaba had shoved those papers into her desk, and didn't hesitate to, like a magpie, head towards that desk. The papers were quickly extracted from the drawer in which they disappeared, and Galinda briefly considered sitting in the green girl's chair, but the thought was so revolting that she, instead, took the pilfered papers and sat on her own bed to review them.

There were several very concerning notions in the entirety of the letter, the least of which was probably who this 'Nessarose' even was. The most concerning might have been when Elphaba stated that she was not _yet_ pelted with anything. Was that a common activity? To throw stuff – stones? – at the closest green person you could find? Galinda hated her roommate more than anything else, and even she wouldn't pelt someone for no reason. Also, Elphaba's language was almost…ambiguous throughout the letter. She didn't name any specifics in relation to her, nor did she directly mention anyone from Shiz except that old Goat whose class always bored Galinda half to death. The shoe predicament, though, was…hilarious. Galinda found herself suppressing giggles. It was true, then; the green bean truly did not own a pair of shoes, and now she was paying for it. In analyzing the letter, however, Galinda was slightly put off by the phrase, ' _I've gone three years without shoes'._ It implied, to Galinda, that the green person had once owned shoes in her life – for, surely, to be at university, you had to be older than three years. Why, then, would she not have shoes now?

At dinner, that day, she relayed all of this information to her friends in the buttery (sans the part about pelting) and posed the same question that had struck her earlier.

"I can't believe you've read that far into her letter. I, personally, wouldn't touch anything that green hands touched," Shenshen wrinkled her nose slightly in disgust.

Pfannee giggled and nodded her head, but Milla seemed to actually be considering the question that was posed. "You analyzed it, too," Pfannee pointed out. "That's so _extratic_ , Galinda. Do you care so much about her now?"

Galinda's face grew red at the teasing, and she turned her head away. "I cannot stand my roommate, Pfannee. I don't care about her at all. I was merely hoping for some gossiping material, and I got some. The pathetic creature doesn't even _own_ shoes. How hilarifying is that?"

With a laugh, Shenshen nodded her agreement. "It is truly hilarifying. How could one go for years without shoes?"

Finally, Milla spoke up. "Perhaps… it's a religious calling. Like, a chosen poverty?"

There was a moment of dead silence where everyone processed what the Munchkin girl had said, and then the entire table burst out into obnoxiously loud laughter. Other patrons in the diner shot them wary looks, but the girls were too absorbed in their gleeful laughing to notice or even care about the looks that were shot at them.

Galinda sobered up before the rest of the group, coming back to reality like a swimmer comes up for air, but deciding not to swim any longer that day. Something about the tone her friends used was off-putting, but Galinda couldn't – and wouldn't – place it for the life of her. These people were the types of friends she needed. She came from a good place, but they came from better. While she grew up on her farm, working with the servants to pick and pull before her mother deemed it unwomanly, her friends had lounged on sofas and drank flavored tea, munching on muffins and riding horses through grassy hills. These were the friends that would raise Galinda higher in this world, that would establish a position for her, a reputation in the upper echelon of Gillikin, rather than her homely little Frottica. These people, she knew, would be the difference between a baronet and a baron.

"Oh, oh! I've just been struck by an idea!" cried Pfannee as she recovered from her laughter. This sobered the rest of the group as they wiped tears out of their eyes to pay attention to her. "Maybe, just maybe, we can get rid of that awful green bean, and then we wouldn't have to have our eyes scarred by her ugliness anymore."

Galinda narrowed her eyes a little bit in contemplation. "I need that disgustingified creature out of my room. I'm in."

"What do you have in mind?" Milla asked conspiratorially.

Pfannee's smile spoke a thousand words.

 **A/N: Well, that was chapter three for y'all! Hope y'all enjoyed it. If you did, or even if you didn't, go ahead and leave a review. Let me know how I'm doing, how you feel about the characters, the scenes... What you'd like to see in the future, maybe. Reviews keep a writer writing, of course!**


	4. Chapter 4

A somewhat satisfying five hours were whittled away from the timeline of her life within the confines of the Shiz Library, surrounded on all sides by pillars of knowledge and those same intelligent soldiers, guarding the knowledge buried deep inside. It was amazing, how safe one could feel in a place that one considered "home". Somehow, Elphaba already felt so attached to her library, to this place where no one was pelting her or harming her or insulting her. Even as the watchful guardian of the castle, the librarian, shot her odd looks, she never questioned the existence or presence of the green girl, which was far kinder than elsewhere. In one's own home, one need not be questioned.

Except, perhaps, if a little frog were to enter the queen's home and cause a ruckus, demanding her attention and distracting her from her precious jewels. Such did occur in the Shiz Library to the emerald queen – as emerald as the City she scoffed at – when a young boy approached her and promptly stuck a knife through her beloved silence.

"I think I've seen you around before."

Elphaba nearly jumped at the new voice, sudden and foreign. With a glare, she observed the newcomer. He was a Munchkin, short, though, in comparison to Frex's family. He was very much unwelcome in her little bubble, and her gaze let him know so. For a minute, she debated whether or not she'd even grace him with a reply, but eventually recalled Nessa's teachings about politeness.

Well. She'd reply, but she sure wouldn't be polite about it. Why would she?

"I'm sure you'd just seen an elf. I can turn myself invisible, you know. I avoid detection that way."

The Munchkin was unimpressed by her halfhearted sarcasm, and shuffled his feet a little bit. "Around campus. I've seen you around campus. Miss Elphaba, is it?"

Her eyes turned into slits as she analyzed him. He certainly carried nothing on his person that he could attack her with, but… Well, she would not underestimate the power of the fists of an angry person. There was no one in this world that would not mean her some degree of harm, she'd learned in her awful three years of life. This was a code that she stuck by now.

"Indeed. And you, Master Munchkin?"

His face turned a little red. "Boq. Master Boq."

"Oh, forgive me," she placed a sympathetic hand to her chest. "I thought we were recognizing people here by their appearances without giving them proper chances at greetings. I must be horribly mistaken if there were, instead, some sort of double standard that I was not aware of."

More and more flustered, Master Boq became, crossing his arms over his chest in defense. "I didn't mean that – Oh, Miss Elphaba, please understand I didn't mean to – " he fumbled around a bit, and then gave up, letting his arms drop to his side with a sigh. "I was not intending to offend you, Miss Elphaba. I was merely trying to greet you."

"And I was just trying to read. What a shame neither of us get to do what we wished to do."

But Master Boq was persistent and soldiered on through her sarcasm. "You know, this library actually doesn't contain that many books. Most of the ones here are watered down, too."

"None of these books have water on them. I'd know."

"Miss Elphaba."

"Yes?"

"What I mean is that these books are generic. Books about politics don't give you reality, but a child's version of the politics. Animals don't work. Wizard the leader. Ozmas gone. They don't tell you why."

She watched him skeptically. "What secrets are you withholding, Master Boq? And why do you taunt me with them?"

"The Three Queens library isn't watered down. It's the one in the boys dormitory, which girls aren't allowed into. I don't mean to taunt you, Miss Elphie, but I did notice how often you read."

"And so? If I cannot access this Three Queens library, then why bother telling me at all?"

"Out of courtesy." His face was red as a tomato. "And also, to offer help. I can check out books for you, you know. I am a boy."

"I didn't notice."

Fortunately, he didn't comment on that insult, either. "You don't look like you've many friends."

"Is that so surprising?"

"Please, Miss Elphie, I'm trying to offer my help here. It would be nice if you were to act decent, at least, when presented with any degree of kindness."

Elphaba was a little taken aback by his sudden bite. The barking Munchkin wasn't all talk. Something about what he said sort of struck her, and her face conveyed her surprise for just a split second before she recovered."

"I didn't ask for any kindness, Master Boq. I didn't ask for any help. I can manage on my own just fine. Now please, leave me in my vault of knowledge, and let me find peace within my own musty pages. Thank you."

Unsure how to respond, and entirely unhappy with the conversation, Boq was flustered for a few moments. She had buried her nose back into a book, though, and he simply gave up, leaving the library and the grumpy green gargoyle it contained.

 **XXX**

It was four days until Elphaba received a written letter back from Nessa – though the handwriting, of course, was Nanny's. The letter itself had been concise, and mostly only listed more advice about blending into society – most of the advice, she had already been following dutifully. Greet people. Check. Remember names. Check. Participate in conversations. Check. Be kind.

Well. Maybe her conversational skills required a little bit of work, but hey, she was only three years old. She needed to be given a break here.

One thing Nessa did mention in her letter, though, was that she had put some bills in the envelope for Elphaba to be able to purchase shoes, thus throwing a wrench into her unending catch-22. The promised money had, indeed, been in the envelope, but Elphaba knew that nothing in this world would come free, and she'd have to later do something for Nessa as payment. It was as if she was taking out a loan.

Still, she was glad to have the loan. Using the bills, she had, the following Saturday, gone out into the Shiz marketplace with only a minimal amount of anxiety about people. Now she sat, barefoot still, on a bench outside Crage Hall, and examined her new boots. She had deigned to choose a pair of shoes that would be sturdy, though she had yet to actually put the darn things on.

She stared down at her feet, hardened against the elements. They were blackened on the bottoms, and as she touched the soles, she couldn't even feel it. A skeptical look was sent at the boots, and then she took a deep breath and slipped them over her feet. It was an odd feeling, though the bottoms of her feet were as unfeeling as ever. Still, having something covering the feeling tops was uncomfortable and trapping, and she immediately wanted them off her feet.

With gritted teeth, she placed her feet on the ground and stood, determined to get used to this odd sensation. She felt as if she was dragging weights on her feet, though, as she ascended the flight of stairs to Room 22, and it took all of her self-control not to remove them from her person.

Upon entering Room 22, Elphaba was not entirely pleased to discover that her roommate was present, but she forced herself to show a bit of pride, chin raised and eyes narrowed. She would not appear weak to her roommate. She would not give the blonde ditz an invite to ridicule her.

That is, until, unsure in her footing now that her feet carried extra weight with them, she tripped and fell just a foot short of her bed, where she would have been able to read herself into a stupor. This caught Miss Galinda's critical attention, who turned her beautifully curly-haired head in the direction of the green girl on the ground.

"Miss Elphaba."

Picking herself up and placing herself on the bed, Elphaba refused to meet the blue gaze that bore into her. "Is there a problem, Miss Galinda?"

The blonde simply observed her for a minute, seemingly unsure of how to react. Her mouth quirked upwards, then back down, and then up again. "Miss Elphaba, you have some nerve. Bringing those hideous things in here."

Oddly relieved, Elphaba kicked the boots off of her feet as she scooted back on her bed. Her feet were strangely freed again, and she swore to herself then that she would never wear those awful foot-traps again. "I required shoes. Those are shoes."

"They're monstrosities. Disgraces to the shoe name."

Elphaba raised an eyebrow and sent a pointed look at the strappy heels Miss Galinda wore on her feet. "At least mine aren't a last-ditch effort to make myself taller."

Miss Galinda's face grew very red, then, and she floundered like a fish for a moment before recovering herself enough to retaliate. "Never would I want to be as freakishly tall nor as freakishly _ugly_ as you, Miss Elphaba. My heels are a choice to… to find me a husband. And I will get one, too."

A husband? The idea was so absurd to Elphaba, for a minute, that she simply stared blankly at her roommate. "A husband?"

"Yes, a husband. It's something acquirable by those of us who are actually pleasant additions to society. You, on the other hand, are a vegetable, and vegetables do not belong in society. I'd be hardpressed to think you'd find a husband who was not able to photosynthesize."

Again, Elphaba raised only a single eyebrow.

"You do realize, Miss Galinda, that my skin is not verdant because I am a plant."

Clearly, Miss Galinda had not realized this, for her face grew red once again.

"My verdigris is something that I was made with. And I assure you, I am very human." Elphaba began to laugh, then, her high-pitched cackling causing a look of slight fear to grace her roommate's features. "Pray tell, roomie, where my roots would be if I were a plant?"

Humiliated, Galinda seemed to be now turning to anger. "Perhaps, they're in those hideous boots you've acquired!"

"Now, now, Miss Galinda. Don't take out your loathing of me on my boots. They actually do their job quite well."

Ugh, now she was defending her own awful necessities. Elphaba hoped the footwear would grow on her, but for now, they were the bane of her existence. If it were her way, she wouldn't have needed them at all, but oh well. Madame Morrible required shoes.

Moving to the vanity on her side of the room, Galinda once again began to touch up her already-immaculate makeup. She recalled Pfannee's plan, how they had set up to "water the plant". If anything, this previous discussion with Miss Elphaba only furthered Galinda's conviction against her. She'd show the green girl just how unnatural her plant-human self was, and never again would the taller girl be able to make fun of her.

However, Galinda wasn't completely certain how to execute the first step of this plan: getting Miss Elphaba in the right place at the right time. She had brainstormed with Milla this morning, but after this argument, it wouldn't be easy to come off of and invite Miss Elphaba out.

But then, Elphaba spoke up with an odd question, in a slightly higher-pitched tone than usual. "Miss Galinda?" she began almost hesitantly. "Since you fancy yourself such an expert on the manner… What would you say it is about my clothing that is…unprofessional?"

Galinda was taken aback by the inquiry. She studied her green roommate tentatively, but Elphaba was not meeting her gaze, instead fiddling with rearranging the books on her measly shelf of belongings. "Why do you ask?"

Elphaba's eyes flashed towards her briefly. "I find myself in need of employment."

 _But you have your shoes now. What else do you need?_

"And you expect me to help you, you horrifying creature?"

"Well," Elphaba came in strongly. "If I were to discover employment, I would spend more time outside of our shared dorm. That is, more time away from you. I only require an answer to my question about how to dress more professionally."

Galinda didn't want to help her. She really didn't. She truly just wanted to say _screw you_ and mind her own business. But… It occurred to her that, if she indulged in this little mission, she could help her friends carry out their prank.

"Fine. I'll help you. But not now; I have a lunch date to go to. However, if you meet me behind Crage Hall at five o'clock, we can sneak out the back of campus and I'll take you to Shiz to shop."

Each word burned. The implications of being seen in public with _that_. Of actually interacting with her like a…friend. It took every scrap of willpower not to vomit right then and there.

 **XXX**

"I've gotten her to agree to it."

Galinda slid into the booth at the Rose Gold Diner, smoothing out the frills on her dress as she placed her hands, folded, on the table and looked to face Pfannee and Shenshen, who were on the other side of the table.

"Ooh! How? Tell us _everything_ about that awful thing!" cried Milla as she leaned in close from beside Galinda.

With a teasing smirk, Galinda slid her hands farther on the table. "The pathetic creature actually went out and bought _shoes_. Can you believe that? I've no idea where she'd gotten the money!"

"Are they stylish, at least?"

"No," Galinda laughed. "They're big, clunky monstrosities! Boots, fit for Quadling Country, I think."

Pfannee made quite the unattractive face and shook her head quickly, the ponytail atop her head bouncing as she did so. "What a disgrace! And you allowed those things in your shared room?"

"I can't believe you have to interact, let alone share a room, with that celery stick!" Shenshen placed a hand on Galinda's and rubbed encouragingly. "Is she awful? Is she terribly loud and annoying? Does she snore?" This last question caused a gasp to overcome both Pfannee and Milla, who leaned in even more.

"Well, she doesn't snore. She mostly just…lays there, completely still. One could mistake her for the dead."

Laughter. "Maybe!" Milla cried. "Maybe she is the dead! A zombie, cast in horror! And that green is simply her decomposing flesh!" None of the girls at the table could breathe for a solid twenty seconds as they chewed this idea and spat it out.

Galinda was the first to recover. "She doesn't have the smell for that, though. I don't understand how not, since she never showers. But maybe it has something to do with the weird bottles she has in the medicine cabinet," she mused.

"How disgustifying!"

"She mostly just sits on the far corner of her bed, reading with that curtain of hair around her face. When she's there, at least. She spends quite a bit of time in the library."

Shenshen made a face. "How can she actually _enjoy_ reading? That creature is certainly not human!"

"Back to the original point," Galinda soldiered on. "I've convinced her to meet me outside Crage Hall at five o'clock. She's skeptical of me, you know. She insults me constantly. It was no easy feat to get her to agree to meet."

"How did you manage it?"

"Well, let's just say," Galinda smiled tragically. "Some things are sent to try us."

 **XXX**

By four-forty-five, Elphaba was waiting behind Crage Hall, sitting on a half-wall with a book in her lap. She had brought out her favorite book – her very first one. This book was the one that she had accidentally stolen from _her_ library – _Quov's Ozian Books._ She remembered the night clearly. She had snuck inside the library at night and practiced her reading. She had cuddled up in a reclining chair with a pillows found on a rug, and opened the book she held now, _The Rose and the Pearl_. She didn't get farther than ten pages in before the guardwoman came in, the very first night she was present. Elphaba had escaped the dark building as fast as she could, and it wasn't until she was back in her alley that she noticed the book was still in her hands. She didn't have the courage to return it, and the idea of owning one of those beautiful vessels of knowledge was… too much. She had kept the novel.

Now, she was about halfway through her twenty-fourth reread of it. It was a story about a young woman, born into slavery, written four hundred years ago, when slavery was still popular and not illegal. The young woman, a Quadling, fell in love with her slavemaster's wife, something that Elphaba could hardly wrap her head around, even now, in her twenty-fourth reread. The slavemaster's wife eventually helped the Quadling escape, but then abandoned her. Having nowhere to go and nothing to do, the Quadling fled to the Vinkus and travelled with the Yunamata tribe, becoming a warrior for the foreign people, fighting for a cause she didn't understand. Her Gillikinese slavemaster comes to track her down, but she murders him, and escapes the tribe. She spends years wandering alone, and births a son of a man who had attacked her at one point. Lost and alone, the woman, riddled by her past, buries her newborn son while he cried, and found a cave that she starved herself in.

Most of the story, it had taken Elphaba months to figure out. Why the Quadling had done what she did. How she had had the son. Some of the story, she still didn't understand, like the affair with the slavemaster's wife, and the attack by the Gillikinese wanderer. Where she was at now, though, was when the Quadling woman had just become a warrior for the Yunamata tribe in the Vinkus, and was out hunting with two of the Yunamatas.

"Really, you shouldn't take a _book_ out shopping. You're taking it a bit far, there."

Elphaba jumped at the sudden voice, and while her hands gripped her book tighter, her eyes flicked up to meet those of Miss Galinda, standing a couple feet in front of her. Galinda had her hands folded behind her back, and her chin raised in pride. "I was waiting for you."

"Well, you didn't really choose a good outfit for shopping, either," Galinda scrutinized her dull, shapeless brown frock.

Elphaba glanced down at herself. "There are outfits for shopping?"

"There are outfits for everything."

"Outfits for working?"

"Of course, there are outfits for working, you dull thing," Galinda rolled her eyes, arms now hanging limply down by her sides. She glanced at something behind Elphaba, but it was brief, and the green girl almost thought she imagined it.

And then, a bucket of something was poured over Elphaba's shoulders and back from behind. Pain exploded over green skin, burning like fire, in the way only water knew how.

Elphaba cried out in pain, pushing herself off of the half-wall to the ground before her. The skin on her back sizzled and bubbled underneath her dress, but she focused solely on her book, which had been hit with some of the water. She shook it out desperately, trying to ignore the sting of tears in her eyes while also silently willing them not to fall, not to embarrass her further.

Watery brown eyes turned to blue ones with a hardened conviction. Elphaba stomped over to Galinda, ignoring the laughter she heard behind her.

"I thought that perhaps, you could be different!" she shouted. Galinda was standing stock still, eyes wide with something resembling terror. Triumph, Elphaba was sure. "But you're just as shallow-minded and judgmental as the rest of this Ozdamned world! There are things that I don't think people like you could ever understand."

With that, Elphaba clutched her book to her chest, which had been mostly protected from the natural hunching of her shoulders, and ran away from the area as fast as she could possibly muster. She skirted around the edges of the building, catching a glimpse of her attackers, who were, as she expected, notorious friends of Miss Galinda.

Slipping into Crage Hall, Elphaba ascended the stairs to the second floor, and slid into Room 22, every second agony for her back. Once inside, she first took care of her book, setting it, open, on its side on the shelf, so the air could hopefully dry it and not smudge any of the precious words contained in those weathered old pages. Then, she headed into the bathroom and slowly peeled off her frock, which seemed determined to stick to her burnt skin. It was a painful endeavor, and the entire time was spent sniffling and trying to prevent tears from falling from her eyes. She was mostly successful, but every time a burning tear would escape, Elphaba would have to grab the closest towel or piece of fabric to wipe it before it could leave her with scars on her face.

With shaking hands, she grasped the bottle of oil that Nanny had found that helped most with burns. She unscrewed the cap and poured a little bit onto a rag and reached over her shoulder to apply it to one of her shoulder blades. The burn intensified for a moment, and Elphaba grunted in pain. Then, it faded just a little in that spot. Breathing hard, Elphaba threw the rag down on the sink and leaned heaving on it, her hands turning mint-green with how hard they gripped the sides. Her heart was beating hard in her chest, and she truly struggled to keep the tears in as she sniffed and tried to compose herself.

She couldn't do this. Why had Frexspar created her? What a selfish, foolish man! It was bad enough that her past was so…unique. Her skin was just rubbing salt on the wound, telling the whole world about how different she was. And now, here, her punishment for living: an allergy to the one element that seemed to be everywhere.

What had she done to deserve this? What sin had she committed before she was even a thing? _I am not that child that died in the womb…_ No one seemed to be understanding that, and she was being burned for it over and over. With a hiss, she pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes, desperately trying to wipe away the tears that were beginning to spill over. The tears then burned her hands, but well, that was better than her face.

The door to Room 22 opened, and a soft shuffling of footsteps entered the room. There was a knock on the doorway to the bathroom, since Elphaba had left the door open.

"Miss Elphaba?" approached the small voice of Miss Galinda.

"I don't need your ridicule, Miss Galinda. Whatever you have to say to me can surely wait."

However, as Galinda looked upon her roommate, she was most definitely shocked. Elphaba's back, which was bare to her since her frock had been removed, was…horrifying. It was terribly burnt, something that Galinda didn't understand. It was just water… How could water have this effect on her? "I don't… I'm not… What happened?" she breathed in disbelief, taking a hesitant step forward. "It was just water." As she observed the bare back and the green skin edging the rather large burn, she found that really, it wasn't an awful shade. Why had she taunted this girl so much? Tears began to prick at blue eyes. "It was just water…"

Elphaba turned her head just a little, enough to glare at the blonde out of the corner of her eye. For a long time, she didn't say anything, just suffered in silence, likely debating how to respond. "My skin is sensitive," was what she settled on, though it came out as more of a growl than actual conversation.

Galinda winced as she took another step forward. She was aware of Elphaba scrutinizing her every move out of the corner of that awful, dark, abysmal eye that was facing her. The Frottican's arms were crossed around herself protectively as she took yet another step forward.

"I didn't know… I swear, if I'd have known, I'd never have let them do it. It was their idea. It was just supposed to be a harmless prank…"

Elphaba turned her head back to the sink, staring down into it darkly. "I don't understand you, Miss Galinda. Leave me to tend to the results of your harmless prank. Haven't you got friends to giggle with, and a husband to find?"

The way she said words like "friends" and "husband", they sounded almost like an insult to have or want. As if they were meant for lower people, a child's fantasy. Although Galinda knew that they were more than that, the way in which Elphaba spoke them was…cutting, still. She felt lighter than air, as if she was floating towards her death as she took yet another step forward.

"Let me help you. Make amends. I'll put your oil on your back. You can't let it get infected, or the infection could spread, and you could possibly-"

"Leave me alone!" Elphaba snapped, flinching as she did so. Her hands were gripping the sides of the sink too tightly, and she was hunched down over it, breathing heavily. Galinda had only seen her like this one other time – on the night with the fire. She didn't understand it then, but now she recognized the look, the posture, the everything. Elphaba was so very, extremely vulnerable here.

Rather than respond, Galinda reached the sink and very slowly grabbed the rag that Elphaba had thrown down. Carefully, she poured some of what was in the bottle onto the filthy thing and pressed it to a green shoulder. Elphaba flinched and let out a small hiss, but then exhaled a deep breath. Galinda noticed her eyes had closed, but her face was still full of immeasurable hatred. Taking the lack of action as a good sign, Galinda worked at the burnt back, lightly dabbing at the wound. It seemed to hurt the green girl, but only for a second or so before she could breathe again. The blonde hoped that overall, it was helping. It occurred to her that this was the first time she had ever touched Elphaba, and even now, she touched her with the rag rather than her actual hand.

She didn't even know why she was helping. Guilt, maybe. A fear of karma. It wasn't clear, but she did it. For what must have been at least an hour, she cleaned the burn, and at one point, found herself wondering what Elphaba's back looked like without it. Her skin was smooth from where Galinda's fingers grazed the edges of her back, and she could see remnants of old, surgical-looking scars hidden beneath the injury. They were patterned, and curious. It took all of her self-control not to trace them, try to figure out what they were.

Another thing Galinda noticed was the fact that Elphaba's ribs were visible from her back, jutting out from her spinal cord in what was most definitely not a healthy way. Galinda recalled what Elphaba had informed her earlier that day, that she was looking for employment. The Frottican received a monthly allowance from her parents; did Elphaba not? Even a repulsive child is still a child.

In silence, she cleaned the wound that she had been the indirect cause of. She told herself that the only reason she was doing this was for some sort of repentance, or to clear her own conscious regarding the matter. She may throw insults like a queen, but she would never wish someone actual, physical harm.

"Stay here. I'll be back soon," she murmured after she finished with the oil, and then stood and exited the room. Elphaba had been strangely, stock still. Her eyes had remained closed while her back was cleaned, and one might mistake her for sleep, or even death, if not for the erratic breathing coming from her. She didn't respond to Galinda, or show any physical representation that she had even heard the blonde, so Galinda had just left.

Outside of Crage Hall now, she ran her hands nervously down her waist and thighs, as far as she could reach. She couldn't believe she was actually helping the cabbage. She knew why, but now that she was out here, away from the green girl and forced to face her own thoughts and her own thoughts alone, she simply couldn't believe it. She had to give her head a little shake to motivate herself to move forward again, arm wrapping around herself as she headed towards the infirmary.

The sun was just beginning to set, casting the campus in shades of orange and pink. Galinda didn't like sunsets. She never had. They were beautiful, but what came after was horrible, and dark. She had always preferred sunrises – a start to the day, just as beautiful, but an omen of life rather than death. She used to wake up early just to climb onto the roof of her parents' barn and watch the sunrise. It would refresh her and give her hope that perhaps, one day, she'd be free of her mother's wretched grasp.

She felt a phantom pain, then, a hand on her throat. She heard a cruel voice, taunting her, hurting her. Slowing down, Galinda gently touched her throat, placing her hand just where that other one had been. No. No one deserved so much pain.

Clearing her throat despite no one being around, she dipped her head and moved forward quicker, determined to get to the infirmary before any emotions decided to overwhelm her.

The Shiz infirmary wasn't a particularly big building. It took on a Cubic Gillikinese style, meaning it was definitely remodeled recently. It had great, marbled double doors, though, reminiscent of an older style that only became popular in lower Gillikin for some time, a couple hundred years ago at least. The building had a low ceiling – conservative, like in the classic Cubic manner. The Cubic Gillikinese style had arisen with the great influx of Quadlings moving to Gillikin. They had brought with them their small, blocky buildings, which quickly became a favorite for building designers because of how few resources it used. Buildings that were hardly used, but still necessary, were often made with Cubic Gillikinese planning.

It was amazing to Galinda, how space could be occupied and crafted into something with a purpose. It almost gave her a strange sense of hope that she didn't quite understand.

She opened the great doors, wondering briefly why they were of such a different architecture than the rest of the building. She entered regardless, determined to get the treatment of the green girl over with so that she could go back to hating the vegetable without any blemish on her conscious or memory of that horrible burnt flesh, angry and red. Once she had that image stored away somewhere she wouldn't have to deal with, things could go back to normal.

There was a man sitting at the front desk, scratching a pen across some paper. As Galinda approached, she could see over the counter that it was a sort of word game he was doing. "Excuse me," she squeaked, suddenly finding it very difficult to speak.

He glanced up at her and scratched at the light stubble on his cheek. "Hello, Miss. Is there something I can help you with? Do you have an appointment?"

"N-no. No appointment. I've just come because I'm in need of, well, bandaging."

"What for? Are you injured, Miss?"

"No, I-I'm not. Someone I know got a little hurt, though, and she needs a bit of bandaging to make sure it doesn't get infected is all."

He frowned at her, his creased face growing even more wrinkled. "How severe are her injuries? Does she need to be hospitalized? You should have brought her straight here."

Galinda flushed bright red, and nervously twiddled her hands in front of her. "It's not that bad, Master, I promise. She said she wouldn't need to be hospitalized. She just sent me to fetch some gauze. I-I just need…some gauze."

She was so very anxious, here in this building. You couldn't tell from the outside, but it was most definitely an infirmary. It smelled of antiseptic, and the walls were white and pristine. There were small beeping sounds from rooms, and a couple students talking to nurses in rooms. They were likely only there for small reasons – a broken toe, or stress, or a check-up – but the atmosphere set Galinda off. She really, truly hated infirmaries and hospitals and everything in between. She hated doctors and nurses and white lab coats and syringes – by Lurline, how she hated syringes! Everything about this place irked her, and she became very desperate to leave. It required no small degree of willpower to remain talking to the clerk.

He was looking at her a little worriedly. "I think you should bring her in here. Why does she need gauze?"

Anxiously, Galinda's hands twisted around each other some more, even more painfully. "She's just broken her hand. She knows how to reset it, though, because her father was a doctor. She said that it's really not necessary for her to come here; she knows how to take care of the injury. She just needs the gauze."

The fibs didn't burn. Galinda had made it this far in life solely by lying. _No, Mother, I did not play with the horses again. Yes, Mother, a husband is the most important thing to me. No, Mother, I'm not crying. Yes, Mother, he broke up with me. Yes, Mother, I love you very much._

"I suppose, if you're sure…" The clerk frowned deeply, scratching at his cheek again. "Wait here a clock tick." He left from behind the counter and disappeared into one of the unoccupied nurse rooms. When he returned, he was holding a roll of the desired bandaging. He handed it over the counter to the Frottican. "Here you are. Please, if her condition worsens, send her here, regardless of what she says."

"I will."

With that, Galinda took the roll and clutched it to her chest as she quickly hurried out of that infuriating place. The walk back to Room 22 in Crage Hall seemed even shorter than the walk from it. Galinda worried that, when she should return, she would find that Elphaba was gone. Or that Elphaba had collapsed, or wasn't breathing, or had strewn the blonde's stuff across the room, or jumped out of the window…

There were endless possibilities that ran through Galinda's head, each one worse and more complicated than the last. Galinda's hands began to once again twist together in anxiety as she ascended the stairs to the second floor of Crage Hall. When she entered Room 22, expecting to see all of the horrors she had imagined and more, she was surprised when the one situation she had not considered was the sight that greeted her.

That Elphaba, still hunched over and still breathing, would be in the exact same spot that she had been left, not half an hour ago. A small breath of relief escaped the Frottican, and she entered the bathroom with more confidence than she had had before. "I've just got you some gauze, to wrap up your wound," she explained, but her voice was a little more breathy than usual.

Elphaba's head turned just a little bit to stare at her, and Galinda was almost sure the girl had lost the ability to speak, until she did. "Why are you doing this?" Her voice was slow, hesitant, and hoarse. There was also an immeasurable amount of pain detectable in it. "Why are you helping me? What do you want in return?"

"I… I don't want anything." Galinda was taken aback by the question, and had to give her head a little shake to clear the shocked expression. "Can't I have helped you out of the goodness of my heart?"

"No. You must want something in return." Elphaba was quickly becoming agitated, and she turned to face the blonde fully, leaning back against the sink with her arms crossing over her small, bare chest. Galinda noticed a patch of lighter-colored skin on her chest, and was momentarily distracted by it. "That's how society works. When someone does something for someone else, that second person owes the first a favor."

"Perhaps traditionally," Galinda amended, not wanting to irritate the green girl. "But in this case, I was the one that participated in an act that harmed you, and that means we don't follow traditional rules. When one person hurts a second person, the first person has to make up for it. That's what I'm doing. I'm making up for it. That's all."

Elphaba looked puzzled. "Is that a thing? No one's ever compensated anything to me before. I'm not certain I believe you."

Galinda couldn't understand what she was hearing. "What do you mean? Why wouldn't you believe me?"

"Perhaps because you've been absolutely nothing but wicked to me ever since we've met," Elphaba responded with the speed of a striking snake.

The blonde's mouth fell open in complete bewilderment for a moment before she had the thought to close it. " _Me?_ I'm the wicked one? _You_ are the one always spitting insults and judgments! I daresay your tongue is even sharper than your chin! Do you know what it feels like to be ridiculed constantly, endlessly? Here I am, trying to help you, to be a good person and clean up the mess that my friends made. And all you seem to be able to do, you horrible thing, is criticize me!"

Did she even hear what was coming out of her mouth? Elphaba wondered. The blonde must be extremely dull-witted and self-centered to make such claims, to suggest that it was her who was the constant victim. To suggest that she was the one who knew what it was like to endlessly be treated like nothing. To be discriminated against. What could possibly have put such a ridiculous and selfish idea into that ditzy blonde brain? For a moment, she could only stare in shock at her roommate.

Then, the spark was lit again, ready to calmly destroy the snobbish Frottican.

"The fact that you believe that, Miss Galinda, is perhaps even more absurd and telling than the notion itself. I would understand that a life in bliss could be blinding and cold, and your sight may be duo-colored. I don't believe that that excuses a complete lack of sense and thought, though. It would be a good idea, you know, to actually think about what you say before you say it, because a little thought can be the difference between life and death. I doubt someone of your upbringing, a pampered, spoiled brat who wouldn't know the meaning of pain if she were tortured, that is, would have any idea how to recognize that anyone else existed and felt outside her own ditzy little bubble of influence. Furthermore, the belief that someone like you could actually know what oppression and discrimination even feel like, stuck inside that powerless ring of popularity, searching so desperately for a husband so that you may lounge through life without lifting a single finger, something that, may I remind you, only someone _like you_ would be able to do without some sort of actual ridicule by those who work for their place, is not only preposterous, nonsensical, and ludicrous – it is downright laughable."

Galinda was in shock. Elphaba was known for her sarcastic, short, insulting quips. A lash in a couple sentences at most. Painful. Elphaba's comebacks were the sting of a wasp, the bite of a snake, the strike of a knife. They were not speeches. They were not ramblings. And this… This was both. This was not Elphaba. It couldn't have been.

She couldn't hide the pain in her eyes. She had entered the infirmary for this ungrateful vegetable… How dare Elphaba assume her upbringing to be all rainbows and butterflies?

" _Why can't you understand that I am not you, Mother! I am not this perfect, brainless child you want me to be, the child you were! I am not happy like that!"_

" _You damn well better become it, then!" Larena shouted, striking her daughter once, twice, as hard as she could muster. "No Arduenna girl studies something as plain and manly as architecture. You WILL listen to your mother, you little bitch!"_

Galinda gently reached up and touched the spot on her jaw with the back of her hand, as if the awful bruise and the gash were still there, even though they had been gone for two years. Her gaze hardened with pure, unbridled hatred as she stared at Elphaba, and it took her a moment to notice that bare green shoulders had tensed even more, hunched even more, a posture of defense.

The hand that clutched the roll of gauze reached up, holding the roll back, prepared to throw it. Elphaba cowered, that hideous, sharp face of hers pinched with scorn and spite. She didn't meet Galinda's eyes, instead staring off at some point to the bottom right of her vision, where she could see the beautiful Frottican face in the corner of her vision. As Galinda readied herself to throw the roll, she remembered what she had read in Elphaba's letter to the mysterious Nessarose.

' _Upon arriving at the campus, I was not pelted with any sort of damaging instrument, which I suppose is a positive sign … It's almost thrilling that I haven't been physically beaten yet – I say yet because of the way these people talk about me behind my back.'_

Galinda's arm suddenly felt weak, and she dropped it, letting the roll of gauze fall to her feet. She blinked back tears, still glaring at the green fiend in loathing. She clenched her jaw for a moment, feeling used and betrayed, and not understanding why.

"You horrible, resentful thing… You wonder why no one likes you."

With that, she turned and marched out of Room 22.

 **A/N: Thanks for reading! Reviews are always lovely to see!**


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: I was absolutely astounded at the amount of feedback that chapter four gathered! Really, I have to thank everyone who read or reviewed - I really loved reading your reviews :)**

 **This chapter is a little bit shorter than the last two monsters, but I wanted to get it up for you guys. I can't guarantee such quick updates in the future as I am pretty busy with work, and I'm about to start uni, but with the feedback you all give, I'm definitely gonna update as often as I can :)**

Galinda didn't see Elphaba for almost a week, aside from the three classes they shared, of course. However, in those, the green girl had become even more broody, her posture degraded even more. She answered questions in class less. She kept her face close to her desk.

Not that Galinda noticed enough to care about any of that… She still felt the raw pain of Elphaba's assumptions, her lecture in the bathroom, all throughout the week, and she was glad that wherever the green girl went outside of classes, it was not Room 22. She supposedly came home to sleep, if the slight displacement of her blanket changing every day was any indication, but she was adept at doing so only when Galinda herself was asleep.

The blonde didn't know if she had used the roll of gauze, but it was still sitting on the floor when she returned later that day, the beanstalk missing. Some part of her said that perhaps the beanstalk had applied some of the gauze and then returned it to the same spot to avoid detection, but she hadn't paid enough attention to the roll to know for sure. Some part of her hoped that that was what had happened, though she didn't understand why she'd care.

Galinda was glad she hadn't had to deal with the verdant plague in her room. They'd bantered and spat and rowed before, but this was a bare-souled, crushing fight, and she didn't know why it hurt so much. Maybe it was because they had both been so vulnerable… They didn't even know each other. They didn't even like each other. In fact, she wasn't sure she had ever felt this much unadulterated loathing for anyone, besides her mother, of course.

As the end of the week approached, she couldn't help wondering why the silence, the avoidance, was beginning to cut her so deeply. She didn't understand it, but she wanted the squabbling, the infuriating comebacks, the quips and insults, because if anything, it was better than this complete silence.

It felt as if she was left utterly alone to the world, finding company now only in the brainless group of girls that she had surrounded herself with. Her run-ins with Elphaba hadn't been pleasing, but they had been sane, and somewhat sensical. More so, she supposed, than the mindless gossip she now heard day and night. She couldn't even find solace in her own room, because with Elphaba's absence from it, the gaggle of rich girls followed her there, haunting and suffocating her home.

Galinda was taken by complete surprise, then, when on that following Saturday, a familiar mean green thing entered their shared room with a couple of bags in her hands and those big clunky boots on her feet. She stared at her in a mix of confusion, disbelief, and anger, but Elphaba didn't glance her way. In fact, if she had even noticed her roommate was there, she didn't show it.

She didn't know what to say. She just watched as Elphaba placed the bags on her bed and began extracting a few pieces of clothing from them. They weren't necessarily stylish, but… Better than those ugly frocks she always wore. Instead of frocks, long-sleeved black dress shirts and long black skirts were drawn and hung up in her rather bare wardrobe.

Suddenly itching for something to do, Galinda got up from her bed, where she had been sketching, and opened the large box which had arrived for her last night. As the season got colder, she had written to her parents to send her autumn shoe collection. She had packed up her summer collection this morning, but then had felt tired and decided to draw for a bit in order to relax.

Her autumn shoe collection was even larger than her summer one, and she slowly began to unpack it and place the beautiful things on her shoe rack. She expected any moment for Elphaba to leave again and let her be in peace, but after the green girl unloaded her new clothing into her wardrobe, she snatched a book off of her shelf and jack-knifed herself on her bed in her usual posture, hunched over the book with it held close too her face and her far-too-soft hair forming that familiar curtain around her.

They both sat in silence, one reading and the other unpacking. Galinda had to jump to get pairs up onto the top of the rack – she always did. It was a struggle every time she had to unload onto the six-foot-tall thing.

It happened in the span of a second.

All it took was one weak jump, one shoe that was still being held to get caught on the top part of the rack, and it all started to come crashing down. Almost the entirety of the box had already been used to fill the thing, to the point of which Galinda had only had the top shelf to do by the time she failed that jump.

As the rack started to tilt and shoes slid forward on it, Galinda was certain that this would certainly be her doom. She knew enough about how space was occupied to know that the rack alone weighed at least two hundred pounds, and that didn't account for all of the shoes it held, probably adding at least another fifty pounds. Her small frame would certainly be crushed.

It didn't seem real, when the terribly thin green body practically vaulted itself across the room, appearing out of nowhere and bracing its verdant hands on the rack. It didn't even seem real, or natural, and Galinda stared at Elphaba in pure shock.

All of the shoes had still fallen off of the rack, but Elphaba had positioned herself so she was directly in between it and Galinda, so any shoes that would have hit the blonde hit her front instead. Elphaba was holding the thing up with a look of concentration on her face, and with a small grunt, she pushed it back up into a standing position.

Galinda stared up at her, not quite comprehending how Elphaba could have moved so quickly, or held up the heavy object. She was thin as a twig, quite literally. Her arms and legs were bony and looked frail, and when Galinda had seen her without her frock on, the day of the fight, her ribs had been prominent, even from the back, and her stomach practically concave. How could she have lifted the rack?

But there was a more pressing question, and as Elphaba turned and finally met her gaze with a blank face, Galinda couldn't help but ask it. "Why did you do that?"

The dark gaze she faced was emotionless, but murky, and however much she tried to read it, she found that she just couldn't. Elphaba was unreadable.

Silence hung in the air for a few minutes before Elphaba exhaled deeply. "Now we're even."

That's all she said before walking back to her side of the room, gently placing the book that she had left on her bed back onto her shelf, and leaving Crage Hall altogether.

 **XXX**

A lot had happened that day. Elphaba couldn't deny it. She had begun to wonder whether Galinda was more intelligent than she let on when she had to go and burn her for it. Then, she had begun to actually repent – to _compensate_ , something that Elphaba still didn't understand, and she had wondered whether Galinda was more honorable than she let on. But then she had to go and show off just how petty and air-brained she was again, insisting that the only green person in all of Oz, as thus proven, wouldn't know what it was like to be constantly ridiculed and criticized. If that wasn't contradicting enough to everything else the blonde had been that day, she held back from attacking her after Elphaba surely pushed her over that edge.

"They won't understand you," Nessa had told her at one point. "And if you value your life, you won't correct them. If someone cares enough, if the right person comes, then they will try to understand you on their own. Don't make someone understand you, because people are stupid and close-minded, and doing so will only result in more hurt for you."

She hadn't tried to make Galinda understand. And yet, it had seemed, sometimes throughout the whole ordeal, Galinda was trying to understand on her own, but then she would turn around and show just how much she didn't understand.

It was the paradox of the fire again – something that was both one thing and the other. The verge of understanding and the complete lack of understanding. Both selfishness and selflessness. A candle that was flickering, not quite certain if it was alive or dead, in really the same way that she had, as far as Nessa had described.

It was a subject that Nessa didn't like to discuss, the day Elphaba was brought to life, but she was so curious, she had needed to know. Nessa had decided to discuss it once, but warned her sister that she would not talk about it again.

There were so many similarities, in this way, between Elphaba and Galinda, and she couldn't understand how Galinda couldn't see them. It made her wonder if the cruelly bitter similarities were even there, or if Elphaba was simply lonely, longing to actually have a friend and confused by Galinda's fiery qualities.

" _You horrible, resentful thing… You wonder why no one likes you."_

That's what she had said. In spite of everything, in spite of the confusion and the swinging and the dual qualities, Elphaba had been hit by that. She had been vulnerable and bare and burned and Galinda had attacked her, just like she did the night with the fire. Granted, Elphaba knew that she had pushed the blonde over the edge. She had done what Nessa had told her not to. But that didn't mean that it hurt any less. Certainly, it didn't make her any less confused about why Galinda didn't pelt her with the gauze.

Elphaba tried to pick herself up from it, she tried to recover, but it was hard when she had emotionally been knocked so low. She had, for the most part, avoided Galinda and Room 22 altogether, sleeping only a few hours every night and washing herself with her oils early so that the blonde needn't see her and become enraged again.

She still had that need for a job, for food, and the pilfering from the garden wasn't quite lasting, nor did it actually provide a decent meal. She had to go out today, to get clothing. In the library, she had even deigned to reading a fashion book – no matter how horrid and boring and frilly it was – so that she may know just what type of clothing to purchase with the remainder of Nessa's loan, now that she was without the assistance of her roommate. She still needed decent clothing in order to present herself to Morrible, so she figured she'd just have to learn to be self-sufficient.

Well, partially dependent, she supposed, if she was counting getting her information from a book as being dependent. Which she didn't, but others very well might, so she was willing to leave that venue open.

Now that she had everything she needed – including the wretched things on her feet, which she still wasn't used to after a week with them – she was ready to approach Madame Morrible once again about the prospect of being her assistant. It was something that did horrify her, as that woman had such a bad air about her, something that frightened even Elphaba, but necessity won out. If this was the only job she could acquire as a green person, then she couldn't turn it down.

It was with a feeling of dread in her heart that Elphaba walked to the building where the Madame's office was. She remembered the way there, despite the office being nestled deep in the building like the den of a bear.

She knocked on the door a couple times, hearing, like before, that clinking sound, which she had confirmed now was china. "Come in," rang that pompous, self-absorbed voice.

Taking a deep breath to steel herself, she opened the door, stepping inside and approaching the desk which the fishy woman sat at. Madame Morrible's makeup was a little different today, and her clothing, too. Only slightly, though. The dress was covered with just as much hoops and bangles, but it was tinged red today rather than last week's yellow. Her makeup matched in color, but besides that, was pretty much the same. The red was more unsettling, resembling a touch of blood rather than faux sunshine.

"Good afternoon, Madame Morrible," Elphaba greeted her, her hands clasped before her.

"And to you, Miss Elphaba," the headmistress responded with that same sickly sweet smile that she always wore. It was an effort not to shudder. "Please, take a seat."

Green hands began to fidget uncomfortably, and their owner struggled to keep them still as she sat in the seat right across from the headmistress, right where she had sat when she had come before. "Madame, I am here on account of that employment opportunity you mentioned when I first came to see you."

If possible, the smile became even more predatorial. "Yes, indeed." She glanced beneath the desk, her eyes narrowing a little at the new shoes Elphaba wore and her smile widening. "I see you've acquired footwear." Was that condescension in her tone? "How about my other stipulation – some nice clothing for an assistant?"

"Yes. I've bought blouses and skirts today."

"Very good. However, the job isn't quite yours yet. I first must interview you to know if you are, well… Qualified."

She had drawn out that last word, as if it were an insult rather than a compliment to be called. Elphaba wasn't quite sure why she was so terrified of this woman. In the hall with all of the amas, Madame Morrible had been strange, but not unnerving. One-on-one, though, it was as if she was a predator, and Elphaba was her prey.

"I'm qualified, Madame."

"We'll see," those painted lips stretched even thinner. "Now, why do you think I should hire you, Miss Thropp?"

The use of her so-called 'last name' was almost like a needle in her side. "I'm a dedicated worker, and I am eager to learn. I'm not deterred by hard work."

"I should hope not. In this job, you will have to do a variety of things, from organizing to cleaning to talking with people and turning them away when I am busy. Are you capable of these things?"

It was such a simple question. Why did it feel like she was submitting to some sort of power? "I am, Madame."

They were interrupted as the door opened and a strange, five-foot-tall tick tock thing entered with a few papers clutched in its claw. It wheeled over to the desk without delay and held the papers out over it.

"Thank you, Grommetik," Madame Morrible accepted the papers, and then explained to Elphaba, "You needn't be worried, dear. Grommetik is also somewhat my assistant, but certain things that I mentioned earlier are not easily achieved by a tick tock thing. The position is still open."

Some part of Elphaba had been hoping that it wasn't. The cowardly part, she reprimanded herself. She needed this job. The only job she could get. What type of worker would she be if she let an opportunity like this slip? If she had learned anything about this world, it was that, unless you were in the top 1% of people, you'd have to work hard to survive. That was something that she was certain Miss Galinda would never be able to understand – working for one's living. It was far too advanced a concept for her pretty little mind to be able to wrap around.

If anything, Elphaba would probably consider herself in the bottom 1%, seeing as how she had no family, she had no money. She didn't even really have a name – just labels, the disappointments and anchors of Him who had manipulated her into an unwanted and unforgiving existence. She found herself, now, constantly at war between the wish that she had never been created and the desire to protect what precious little life she had.

Rather than respond verbally, Elphaba flashed Madame Morrible something resembling a smile, she thought. The best she could do, anyway, given the fact that her heart was beating terribly and the whirring of the tick tock thing was making her hair stand on end.

Madame Morrible shifted through the papers. "Thank you, Grommetik, that will be all," she dismissed the thing, and it wheeled away immediately. "See, Miss Elphaba, I have here your documents and history. Any past records, anything that applies, that is. Your whole life."

 _Your whole life_. If Elphaba's heart had been running before, it was full-out sprinting now. She heard her blood rushing in her ears, felt her hands beginning to shake. Could Madame Morrible know? Could she somehow have obtained copies of Frexspar's journal, which Elphaba slept with under her pillow? (Now, keep in mind, she wasn't stupid – she had gotten the thing secured with a key, and the key was never off her person.) "You mean my escape from Ev? Frexspar and I searched for Evian records when enrolling me in Shiz, but we didn't have access to anything. All we have is the Ozian ones from my escape across the border."

Madame Morrible's lips quirked, almost dangerously, as if she saw through the green girl's lies. "And what can you tell me about your life in Ev? I mean, since there are no records."

 _Shit_. Her and Frexspar hadn't gone over this… (Not that they particularly went over the cover story _together_ , it was more of him telling her what her backstory was.) She had a preparation, but nothing that Frex knew about. She was hesitant to use the preparation in case it would come to bite her later on.

Once, she had become concerned that this very situation might arise at some point or another. "What do I do," she had asked Nessa, "if I'm asked about Ev at all? Frex only told me that I escaped from there, and that the waste had left me with a permanent and rather disgusting case of verdigris. How do I respond if I'm asked about Ev? Socially, what should I do?"

"I doubt anyone will ask you about Ev," Nessa had responded with a classic roll of her eyes. "Everyone knows how horrible that place is. Why would they want their minds dirtied by the very mention of what the land is like, or worse, the waste, or perhaps worst, the people? If someone does ask you, just play off of the tales."

"What tales? I've never actually read anything about Ev, you know."

"Oh," Nessa had responded. "Well, we'll just have to get you a book about it, then."

They had. That book had actually been the sixth book that Elphaba had ever come to own. It wasn't particularly outstanding compared to her other books – especially _The Rose and the Pearl_. That one had been her first, and her favorite, even if, after twenty-odd rereads, she still didn't understand all of it. Perhaps she should read it again…

"Well," she began, leaning forward a bit with her hands twisted together in her lap. "What do you want to know?"

"Everything."

Elphaba swallowed, trying so desperately to hide the rush of fear at Morrible's tone in that one word. "My parents were abducted by a group of bandits while my mother was… was creating me." She couldn't quite get herself to say 'carrying', or something less awkward than 'creating'. She had also hesitated before saying 'mother', but she hoped that could just be understood as her being upset by her so-called 'parents' being gone. "They were taken, by the bandits, to Ev, where they were stripped of everything they owned. I was born and named for Saint Aelphaba, partially, I think, because they wished they could disappear behind a waterfall. We lived in the slums of Ev, unable to flee because of the urchins and scum that simply wouldn't let us. Last year, my parents were killed in their sleep, but I was spared, for some reason. I was able to slip by those who would not allow me to leave, and I made it to the border, but I had to… I had to go through the toxic waste of Ev in order to get to Oz."

The story was rehearsed. She had written it herself after reading everything she could about Ev. Stick to the legends. Stick to the stories. Stick to what people believe. She hadn't actually told the story to anyone, in an actual conversation, but she was still somewhat proud of how she had done, especially given how far off all of it had been.

Madame Morrible's expression didn't waver, and apparently, she wasn't done torturing the poor green bean. "It's impressive, my dear, that you are as well-educated as you are, then, given those awful conditions."

Elphaba's heart skipped a beat, but she didn't let it show on her face, concentrating on maintaining that confident demeanor. "Yes, well, my parents had attended university. Not Shiz, but a private school. They would tell me how they hated it so, but they would also teach me basics. Reading, writing, speaking, grammar and arithmetic. They had dreamed that I'd make it back to Oz one day."

Her tongue had begun to feel heavy, but she refused to let it slow her down.

The fishy woman before her leaned her head forward just a bit, tilting it ever so slightly towards her. "Very well, then, Miss Elphaba. I'd say you are _plenty_ qualified to be my assistant. Can you start next Saturday, then?"

 **XXX**

Elphaba had returned to Room 22, somehow knowing that Galinda wouldn't be there. She didn't really care either way, but if possible, she wanted to avoid the blonde's swinging ways. It was a bit overwhelming, how she seemed to be two people at once, and the less time spent with her, the better.

When she arrived, she was a little surprised to see that the mail had arrived through the mail slot in the door. Recently, she hadn't been around during the day, so she had completely forgotten that mail was even a thing. After all, she certainly didn't receive any. She didn't even really have a name. Every mention of her in an Ozian file room was put there recently. She had no record, or subscription, or, really, any friends. No one who would want to contact her.

She was about to just ignore the small pile of mail, sparing it only a single glance as she passed – surely, it was all for Galinda – when she happened to noticed her name. _Elphaba Thropp_. She stopped, recognizing the handwriting, and realizing that she had been wrong. There was one person who wanted to contact her.

Bending down, she retrieved the envelope and took it to her desk, sitting down with the thing and turning her reading lamp on. The handwriting was unmistakably Nanny's flowing scrawl, but Elphaba knew that the content was not spoken by the kindly old woman. She felt a twinge of regret; she had forgotten to write back to Nessa, what with everything going on with her two-sided roommate.

She took the letter opener that Nanny had bought for her and carefully opened the envelope, removing the letter inside with delicate hands, far unlike those which had lifted up the shoe rack just earlier today, and yet the very same. She shook the thought from her head. She was merely evening the score. That was it. She desperately turned her attention back to the letter from Nessa, opening it up and reading it silently.

 _Dear Elphaba,_

 _I was surprised not to have heard back from you this past week, and not pleasantly so. I do worry about you, out there in the real world on your own. Let's not forget that you're only three years old. You're practically a toddler, Fabala. I asked you to write to me every week because I wish to affirm that you are okay. If you neglect this simple responsibility, don't think that I won't find some excuse to come live there beside you, or at least close enough to keep an eye on you! I haven't yet received any word from Shiz University informing me that you are deceased, or hospitalized, or beaten, so I suppose that is a good sign, after your third week there. Maybe people are actually getting used to you._

 _I was rereading your first letter to me, and I noticed a few oddities that I would like to discuss with you. I happened to notice that you didn't really directly mention any people. You did talk about your Goat teacher, Doctor Dillamond, but besides him, you spoke only in generalizations. 'They' and 'Them'. Surely, you are living in a dorm room, whether it's with one person, or three, or fifteen. I'm not well-versed in the arrangements there, I'm afraid. But I don't only want to know about how wonderful your classes are, Fabala; I want to know about the people. Have you happened to make any friends, or anyone you could consider a friend? No more avoiding questions._

 _Also, you seem rather concerned about Father, and I find that… Well, concerning. He is nothing more to you than a man who let you stay under his roof. He's not a bad man, don't get me wrong. He's just… misguided. Misinformed. He doesn't understand that the Unnamed God doesn't hate you. I think he just realized the insanity of creating you too late, and tried to cover up his mistake, but the failure haunts him still. I don't think you should rely on him at all. He won't do anything for you, and you need to accept that. Move past him. Nanny and I can take care of you. Shell, too, except he really doesn't even know how to take care of a goldfish, so I wouldn't necessarily count on him._

 _Nanny and I worry about you. I asked you to write me every week, and your silence has been disconcerting. We want to come and visit in two weeks' time. Just for a weekend. We'll stay in a hotel in the Shiz area. Father doesn't even need to know about it, since he'll be away on a preaching mission to the eastern regions of the Glikkus. 'Here I am, being once again requested to soothe and heal the masses!' he told us upon receiving the invitation. He'll be gone for a full four days – plenty of time for Nanny and me to come check in on you. We're eager to meet any potential friends you may have made. I will see you then, my sister._

 _Farewell,_

 _Nessarose_

Elphaba stared down at the letter in her hands, not quite sure how to process most of it. She wouldn't write back about Galinda, and she wouldn't write back about that Munchkin, Boq, either. Nessa didn't need to know about them. They weren't potential friends – they were pests. Pests and insufferable contradictions. The only person that she cared to write to Nessa about was Doctor Dillamond.

It was because of this that, as she sat down and wrote her letter back to Nessa, she didn't directly answer any of the questions about the people. She didn't comment on Frex again, or that whole section about him. All she wrote about was the job opportunity, in the blandest words she could, and her new, improved wardrobe. She talked about the Shiz Library some more, leaving out the details about the pesky Munchkin, of course. She did not – would not mention her roommate, nor did she comment on Nessa and Nanny's impending visit.

She could deal with that later.

The door to Room 22 and Galinda backed in, still facing her friends out in the hallway. "Yes, well, I really ought to organize my closet again," she told them with an apologetic tilt of her head.

"I could help," Shenshen offered, stepping forward.

"Ah, that's a lovely offer," Galinda responded, but somehow, her voice seemed less than enthusiastic. She glanced behind her for the first time, catching sight of Elphaba. "Artichoke is in, though. I wouldn't want you girls to have to suffer through her presence," she laughed.

"Aw, Galinda, you're so good!"

"That's so good of you!"

"I don't envy you, you poor soul!"

Galinda forced a laugh. "I will brave through it, I promise," she smiled charmingly and then closed the doors on her friends. Once clear, she leaned against the doorway and breathed out a sigh. "Thank Oz…"

Okay. This was too good. Elphaba couldn't resist commenting this time as she deposited her finished letter in a drawer of her desk. "Trouble in paradise, Blondie?"

The Frottican shot her a nasty look. "I don't see how it's any of your business, Miss Elphaba."

"You are absolutely right, Miss Galinda. Perhaps I should remove myself from the situation entirely, forget I ever had any acquaintance with anyone you've ever been in contact with. Yes, I believe that should do it."

That only seemed to worsen things – but, hey, that's kind of what Elphaba had been going for.

"For a week, you've completely avoided me and this room, and for good reason, might I add – I had half a mind to boil most of your stuff," Galinda warned. "Why are you suddenly talking to me again?"

Elphaba pondered this, staring up at the ceiling and placing one bony finger on her chin in contemplation. "Well. The scores are even. That day hardly exists now as far as I'm concerned. Wounds heal. And… Oh! It is awfully fun to tease you," she grinned, showing off her teeth. "Or perhaps I'm just in a good mood." It wasn't a lie. Nessa always did seem to have that sort of charm about her.

She was the type of person who could break a million hearts, and yet, no one could remain angry at her after one gorgeous smile in their direction. Nessa was beauty and wonder and happiness, all wrapped up in a small, critical, Unnamed God-loving, armless body. Elphaba knew that, if her sister wanted, she could have the whole world wrapped around her… Well, her toe, for lack of a better appendage.

Galinda stared at her in disbelief for a moment before giving her head a small shake, blonde curls bouncing. Well. At least she got the banter she'd been missing back. "Miss Elphaba, have I ever mentioned how horrendibly monstrous and repulsive you are?"

"Might've come out once or twice."

"Oh, really? Once or twice? I can't imagine it would come as much of a shock to you. Someone of your color of temperament mustn't be capable of making much friends, after all."

Elphaba's head tilted a little in curiosity at Miss Galinda's choice of words. _Your color of temperament_. Not just _your color_ , not just _your temperament_ , no. _Your color of temperament_. This way, she wasn't sure what, exactly, was being insulted, and so, she couldn't retaliate accordingly. It was… Actually somewhat genius, though she doubted that her blonde roommate had thought that much into it.

"What are friends, except annoying people who unnecessarily and incessantly offer to help you organize your closet?"

That struck a chord. "That was a private conversation!" Galinda insisted, though her face went red. She was still standing by the door, her arms crossed over her chest.

"It was quite loud to be a private conversation."

"That doesn't mean you had any right to listen in."

"Regardless," Elphaba shrugged and stood up from her desk, beginning to cross the room towards her roommate. "I'll be spending my evening in the library, if you don't mind."

Galinda's heart sped up a little as her roommate approached, and she stepped aside to let the green thing get to the door. It only occurred to her once Elphaba was halfway through the doorway that there was a reason why she shouldn't go. "Wait!"

Elphaba stopped, turning her head to glance at the blonde out of the corner of it. "Why?"

"It… It looked like it was going to rain, is all. I don't particularly think you want to be turned into a puddle."

The verdant woman hesitated, and then sighed and turned around, retreating back in the room, away from the wet. "If it doesn't rain tonight, Blondie, I'm blaming you for the lack of new reading," she warned.

Part of Galinda wanted to point out that it would've been the sky's fault for fooling them all, but she was feeling suddenly very tired, and she didn't really want to argue it more. Instead, she just ended the conversation with a quip. "Perhaps I should have let you go out, then, and get melted," she responded sniffily as she crossed over to her bed. Elphaba did the same, ignoring her comment and immediately getting lost in a book.

Once on her bed, the blonde retrieved her sketch pad from where it was kept, under the top right corner of her mattress. She itched to do more, to talk more, but she didn't want to row again. Most conversations with Elphaba turned into rows…

Instead, she busied herself with her sketch pad, constructing a castle this time. She built what she'd expect the Wizard's palace to look like – having never seen it herself, she could only speculate. Bit by bit, she built, adding every little detail she could imagine. There were high arches and pointed columns, stairs just for the sake of there being stairs, spirals and spikes. There were emerald statues, guarding the palace and everything inside, all of its secrets.

She didn't know what made her do it, but she then started drawing clouds above the Wizard's palace. Dark clouds. From them, black streams spilled down before the castle like a curtain of black silk, cloaking the secrets in night rain…

It did storm that night. As Elphaba lay down in her bed and waited for sleep to envelop her, she had the decency to at least feel grateful to her blonde roommate.

 **A/N: That was chapter five! Remember, I love reading your reviews and hearing your feedback about the fic! :D**


	6. Chapter 6

**A/N: A huge thank you to everyone who reviewed chapter 5! I really enjoy reading everything you guys have to say. Here's chapter 6 for you guys - I hope you enjoy!**

 **I don't want to ramble too much today, but I am heading to uni this weekend, so updates might be slower. I will still be updating as much as I possibly can!**

 **Oh, also... To those of you wondering when things will start moving? I did mention this was _slowburn_ , didn't I? haha**

Well, it did seem like things were back to normal between her and Miss Elphaba, Galinda reflected. She had mixed emotions about the whole deal, to be honest. Parts of her were grateful to have that bit of sanity back, and parts of her despised the tension that sometimes arose when things would get heated.

Surprisingly enough, though, her friends were just a little bit more bearable now. Sometimes, she'd get annoyed with their gossiping, and she'd return to Room 22 in something of a fit, and Miss Elphaba never failed to provide her with some sort of squabble. Half the time, Galinda couldn't even remember what they fought about afterwards, but she usually felt a tad bit more relaxed.

Things were normal again. That was the bottom line. Whether or not it was a good thing didn't matter – all that mattered is that it was better than what things were before. Galinda loathed her verdant roommate, and the vegetable in question loathed her right back. It was as it should be.

It was Thursday, and Galinda had just returned to the dorm from her Ozian Literature class. She had about an hour's worth of time before Biology, which she very unfortunately shared with the most notorious beanstalk of the university.

She knew, deep down, that she should _probably_ work on the essay for Ozian Literature, which was due the very next day. However, she felt that she could very well do that later. Instead, she scooted to a far corner of her bed and relished in the fact that Miss Elphaba was nowhere to be seen. Odd, since she didn't have a class at the moment – her last class had ended two hours ago. Galinda shrugged it off and figured that she was likely buried in the recesses of some library. It shouldn't matter to her, anyway.

She drew her sketch pad from under her mattress and flipped through it until she found a blank page. She grabbed the bag of pencils from her satchel and began to construct yet another building. Another beautiful piece of architecture.

It was a pink house, with widely sculpted rims and floral siding, as consistent with Old Settican style. The windows portrayed nothing of the secrets hidden deep inside, the ways in which the inhabitants chose to fill the space. Outside, green ivy snaked up the sides of the home, reaching up and stroking it, kissing it with the desperation of a starved creature.

 **XXX**

It was very apparent to Elphaba that her first day working for Morrible was in two days. That was a fact that she was not ignorant of. In honesty, she didn't know what it was about the fishy woman that set her on edge so, but nevertheless, parts of her feared the upcoming work shift. She had received a note from the headmistress just a day ago informing her to arrive at 9:00 sharp.

Regardless of whether or not she liked Madame Morrible, Elphaba would arrive at the designated time, maybe earlier, simply because she was too stubborn to quit. That didn't mean she wasn't a tad anxious about the job, though…

There was an hour before biology class, and she had found herself, after Advanced Mathematics class earlier, in the library. She had been trying to find anything she could about economics. She hadn't been able to read up on them much – just the basics – and now that she was part of the workforce, so to speak, she desired to be more well-informed on the subject.

The only issue was, she couldn't find any book in the Shiz Library that would offer her more than the basic understanding she already had. It was entirely and wholly frustrating, and over the course of two hours spent in the wonderful building, she had yet to come across that which she was searching for.

"Miss Elphie?"

At the sudden voice, she nearly dropped the book she was putting back on the shelf, after finding that it did not contain the information she wanted. She spun around, book still in her hand, heart beating faster than normal and a feeling of exhaustion upon seeing who it was.

"Why do you call me that? My name is Elphaba," she shot. "What do you want this time, Master Boq?"

The Munchkin in question shuffled his feet for a moment, his hands clasped before him, seeming unable to respond. He caught sight of the title of the book she held – _A Brief Study on Demand and Supply_. He tilted his head a bit, scrutinizing it, and then looked back up at her.

"Why are you reading that?"

She narrowed her eyes irritably. "To learn more about the economy. Why else?"

Boq reached out and boldly took the book from her grasp, flipping through the pages and skimming the words inside. "Watered down."

"As I told you last time, Master Boq, there is no water on any of the pages; I would –"

"You would know, yes," he interrupted her. "But that's not what watered down means. You know how you can have a beaker with a chemical inside?"

"…Yes."

"Well, if you add water to the chemical, its potency goes down. The more water you add, the less of the chemical there is. It becomes diluted."

"This is simply chemistry, Master Boq," she gave a dismissive wave of her hand.

Boq scoffed and shook his head but soldiered on still despite how red his face had gotten. "That's what happens to the contents of the books. While they are not actually wetted, the content is. The more fluff and praise-to-the-Wizard they put into them, the less you get of the actual subject matter. Does that make sense?"

"…I suppose."

In truth, it made a lot of sense. Elphaba wondered how she could have been so blind to it before. Obviously, there was a reason why she couldn't find the material she was looking for, and that was because she wasn't meant to find it. It wasn't anywhere to be found in this library.

"Forgive me, Miss Elphaba, but you were so quick to dismiss my help before. I am simply trying to be kind."

Elphaba raised a single eyebrow, her arms crossing over her chest as Boq returned her book to its rightful place on the shelf. "Most people don't take to being kind to me at all."

Boq shrugged and shoved his hands into his pockets. "All the more reason for me to do so, then. You see, I'm a second year, and my first year, I took an economics class. Unfortunately, they only open the class to the boys – a misogyny that I am very much against, for the record."

"It makes no sense," Elphaba shook her head. "Why would they deny half of their students of learning and information?"

"I agree," he said, and then moved on to his point. "I still have the book from the class, and the subject matter isn't diluted at all. I've got notes written in the margins, too, things that the professor would talk about or elaborate on that weren't in the book already. I don't use the book anymore."

"How much would you want for it?"

Boq's eyes widened a little in disbelief. "Miss Elphie, I said I don't need it anymore. I wouldn't mind giving it to you if you were to find it at all enriching. If anything, sticking it to the misogynistic founders of the university is payment enough," he chuckled.

"I don't quite believe you."

He sighed and gave her a pointed look. "Just come with me."

Elphaba wasn't sure why she followed him, but her feet moved of their own accord, and she didn't bother to stop them. The two of them walked wordlessly from the Shiz Library to what she could only assume to be the Three Queens building.

It was bigger than Crage Hall, and parts of her wouldn't be surprised if the dorms were bigger than hers and Galinda's, as well. She wondered how the university could remain so biased towards men when there was a woman running it. Were _she_ the headmistress, Elphaba would try her hardest to make everything completely equal for everyone – male or female, human or Animal. It didn't seem that Madame Morrible had the same agenda in mind.

"Stay here for a moment. I'll go fetch the book," Boq told her, holding out his hands as if to keep her in place without touching her. After that, he disappeared inside the building.

With a small huff of annoyance, Elphaba leaned back against the wall of the Three Queens dormitories and folded her arms across her chest. Why was she here? Why did she follow Master Boq? Why didn't she just cast him out, like she had done the previous week?

What silly questions.

She knew why.

She was here because of her desire to learn. Because of her desire to know. That's why she was at Shiz University, after all. It was that yearning that got her out of that alleyway in Quadling Country, the one she had lived in for the first two years of her life. She didn't want the diluted books in Shiz Library – now, to clarify, not all books in there were watered down. She did find some rather wonderful education within, just not always what she was looking for. No. She wanted to know the truth – unbiased, unabashed, unaltered truth, told like it was.

That is what Boq led her to believe the boys were taught, as opposed to the frilly lies and conjurings that were fed to the girls, such as the ridiculous notion that one needed a husband simply to be happy in life.

When Boq returned, he wasn't alone. There was a taller boy with him. The stranger had a ruggedly handsome face and a swagger in his step, and seemed to wear a smug grin as if it were part of his features.

"Oh, I'm blinded by vegetation!" the newcomer held his arms before his face, shielding himself from Elphaba. "You really are quite horrific, aren't you? And here I thought that the rumors exaggerated."

She narrowed her eyes in hate at his insults. "You mean you haven't seen me before? I am quite conspicuous, you know. Oh, wait, yes, I remember now. I can turn myself invisible. A trait I learned amongst the elves."

"You've got the temperament of one, for sure," he retorted with an easy smile. "I've seen you around before, Beanstalk, but never in such close quarters." He shuddered and then began sauntering off. "Catch you later, Boq," he called with a lazy salute.

When Elphaba looked back at Boq, his face could rival the vibrancy of a beet. "I-I apologize, Miss Elphie," he squeaked. "That's my roommate – er, Avaric. I promise, he's really not all that terrible, he just –"

"I know the kind. He doesn't bother me in the slightest," Elphaba dismissed quickly.

Exhaling deeply, Boq held out his arms to her, the book grasped in his hands.

Although her fingers itched to enclose themselves around it, Elphaba hesitated again. "What do you want from me, really?"

"Nothing! I really, truly want nothing. Why is that so hard to believe?"

"It goes against the nature of everything I've been taught, for one."

"You are impossible, Miss Elphaba."

"Thank you."

He took a step forward, holding the book closer to her person. "I mean it. You deserve a chance to learn economics – all people do, and the university has deprived you all of that right. So, if I can help even one ostracized person seek justice, green or not, then I will. Take the book."

Elphaba studied him for a moment, unsure of how to respond, and then threw back her head and cackled. Surprisingly, Boq didn't even flinch at her unusual and so-called 'terrifying' laughter. Instead, he just watched on steadily as she rode out her laughter, and then grinned down at him.

"Alright, then," she agreed, grabbing the book and tucking it into her satchel.

Boq smiled, proud of his victory. Then, something caught his vision, something past Elphaba, and his smile faded a little. He seemed… enamored completely by what he was staring at, and Elphaba's curiosity was too much for her not to follow his gaze, turning to stand a foot or so beside him.

Ah. He was staring at Miss Galinda and her group of high-class friends. Elphaba raised an eyebrow in disinterest, watching as the blonde said something indistinguishable that had her whole group, including herself, laughing.

"She's beautiful, isn't she?"

Elphaba was taken by surprise by Boq's random comment. "Hm?"

"Miss Galinda. Isn't she just beautiful?"

That certainly wouldn't be the _first_ word that Elphaba would use to describe her ditzy blonde roommate… She cocked her head to the side a little, watching Galinda as she smiled cheekily at her friends and then brushed a lock of golden hair behind her ear. "I… I suppose, from an outside third party view, Miss Galinda could be considered aesthetically pleasing to the eye."

"You read like a dictionary, you know that?" Boq muttered.

"She puts so much work into it, too," Elphaba commented, leaning back on her heels. "She looks fine when she gets out of bed, but she spends two hours on just her hair every morning, let alone her makeup."

"I'm sure she looks gorgeous when she gets out of bed…" Boq sighed dreamily, a lost smile on his face. Then, it faded a little and he finally tore his eyes away from Galinda, directing them at his verdant companion instead. "How would you know that, though?"

Elphaba shot him an unimpressed glance. "We have the misfortune of sharing a dorm room," she deadpanned.

Boq's eyes widened in surprise and, dare she acknowledge it, hope. "Oh, Miss Elphie, could I perhaps persuade you to introduce me to her? It would mean so very much to me!"

Her eyes narrowed in consideration. She was leaning heavily towards 'No' until she remembered him giving her the economics book just a few minutes ago – no catch, no price. Just… Out of kindness. With a sigh, she gave in. "I can try. She's absolutely infuriating, though. You haven't a clue what you're getting yourself into."

 **XXX**

Shortly after agreeing to help the Munchkin, Elphaba had headed to her Biology class, still managing to be the first one there. As she took her seat at the front of the class, the rest of the class filtered in slowly, with Miss Galinda and her friends being some of the last to arrive. They situated themselves in a little group of desks near the back, muttering and giggling amongst themselves.

Elphaba tried to ignore her blonde roommate throughout the class, and the impending predicament which she had agreed to. She also tried to ignore her quickly-arriving work day, and then the week after, when Nanny and Nessa would be visiting…

She didn't need to think about those. The only thing that mattered at this moment was Doctor Dillamond and the lecture he was giving about the functions of the nucleus.

 _Does anxiety alone prove my sentience as a normal person?_

The question struck Elphaba randomly, and it took effort to push it from her conscience. That didn't matter at the moment. She could stay after class and work with Doctor Dillamond on the proof of her normalcy, but for now, she needed to focus.

The class itself was rather uneventful besides. Elphaba took her time packing up, letting everyone around her leave first so it was just her and Doctor Dillamond. The Goat was able to clasp a rag between his hooves and was cleaning the chalk off of the blackboard. Although he wasn't able to write, Elphaba often helped him throughout the class when he would need something on the blackboard.

"Something on your mind, Miss Elphaba?" Doctor Dillamond asked kindly.

With a sigh, Elphaba placed her bag on her desk and stood up. "The same as always, I suppose, Professor," she smiled at him. "Would you mind if I used your microscopes again?"

"Not at all!"

She reached into her bag, drawing out the journal that she used for her extracurricular biology studies. She also took in hand a pen. After setting herself up at one of the microscope stations, and using a cotton swab from one of the drawers to gather some of the tissue on the side of her cheek, she leaned down and peered through the familiar machine.

Her cell structure was pretty much the same as it had always been. She sketched what she saw on a blank page, making sure to include every detail she could see. As mentioned before, she wasn't necessarily an artist, but she was generally decent at constructing the cells she saw in the machinery.

With a sigh of frustration, she leaned back in the chair, rubbing at her left temple. This was useless. She was just doing the same thing, over and over again, and expecting to have some sort of revelation that she'd never had before.

"Is something the matter?" Doctor Dillamond asked, coming over to stand beside her chair.

Elphaba shook her head mutely for a moment, staring down at the same sketch she had done three times before. "I've reached a dead end, I think. There's not much more I can do with my DNA, or yours. I need a normally-colored human. I'm afraid I haven't any friends, though."

"And what about your roommate, Miss Glinda?"

"Miss Galinda can hardly even stand to look at me," Elphaba scoffed. "She's infuriating and self-centered. There's no hope of me getting any actual DNA from her, unless you're suggesting I steal her toothbrush."

Doctor Dillamond laughed softly. "I am not suggesting anything, Miss Elphaba. Though I have to say, your perseverance on the project is admirable. May I ask why you're so dedicated to proving that you are no different?"

Elphaba swallowed hard, fiddling with the microscope rather than answer him immediately. Should she tell him? Was he trustworthy? Would he cast her out of his class?

If anything, Doctor Dillamond was the least reactive to her skin. In fact, she had never heard him even mention it besides when in reference to her project. When she had first walked into his class, he hadn't looked at her any differently than any other student. It was almost as if her verdigris was completely inconsequential to him. As if she was just a normal person to him. Would telling him take a weight off her chest, or would it ruin everything?

"Sir, could I… Could I tell you something? It… It's not very normal." She sighed. "And you might feel the urge to run in fear or… or throw something at me. I just… I need you to wait until the end before you react."

Dillamond gave her a look of confusion. "That's alright. Go ahead and say what you need to say."

Taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly, Elphaba tried to slow her rapidly beating heart. "I was not born, Professor. I was… made. In a basement. My… Father, though he loathes me to call him that, and me in general I suppose, he constructed me in the basement of his home out of corpses he stole. With his wife, before she died birthing his son – my brother, I guess – they had lost a child, their first child. A daughter, who they were going to name, well, Elphaba. As my… my sister tells it, he had randomly had the idea to recreate the child he had lost – the child that the Unnamed God never meant to take. He had to apply a chemical to my skin that reversed the decomposition that had taken place, I suppose, and it was that chemical that gave me this cursed hue."

Doctor Dillamond was quiet for a long while, and he had sat in a chair at some point during the story. He didn't run, though. He didn't flee. He just cast his eyes to the ceiling and pondered what she said for, in Elphaba's opinion, far too long.

"I suppose those are… unordinary circumstances, yes," he finally spoke as he stroked his beard with his hoof. "It is perhaps more believable than the story of the toxic waste in Ev, too."

Elphaba was surprised by that. "Professor?"

He met her gaze and laughed dryly. "The stories of Ev are just that. They were spread by the Wizard himself, to promote Oz. The truth is that Ev is a thriving civilization – most of Oz just chooses to ignore that, even though just thirty years ago, Ev was our main trading partner. It's almost as if Oz just… forgot."

She couldn't believe what she was hearing. "So you're not at all disturbed by what I've told you? By how I was made? I mean, I've been so worried for so long about how people would react, and you're acting as if I was merely born out of wedlock or something."

"Well, my dear, it's not as if you're decomposing before our very eyes. Your circumstances are unusual, but they do not define you. I am, more than anything, curious as to how it was that your father brought you to life," Dillamond explained, his nose twitching in mirth.

"I have his journal," she admitted, twisting her hands before her nervously. "Everything he wrote while he was constructing me. He explained much of it in detail, but… Most of it, I think was just pure luck, because in reading it, it's clear that he didn't always understand what he rambled about. He became so insane over the course of creating me, too, that near the end, his writing is nowhere near literate."

"Why would you keep it?"

Elphaba looked at him in shock. It was… For all intents and purposes, a viable question. Why had she kept it? Why would she keep the very thing that would just remind her of the horrible way she was created? Without it, she could just be a normal – albeit verdant – person. She could just make up some story. Maybe she did have a mother, but her mother had run off with some outlandish stranger. Maybe he had fed her some sort of crazy alcoholic drink, something that bordered on poison. Maybe they had conceived her that night. Maybe that poison was why she was green…

 _What a ridiculous story_.

That would never happen. If Elphaba had had a mother, she surely would have been faithful. She would have been kind. She would have loved any daughter of hers, green-skinned or not. But that was all 'if'. That was all fake. If only…

"Proof, I suppose?" she answered hesitantly. "Proof that I'm even here." _That perhaps he cared about me at one time…_

"Oh, Professor! I completely forgot to turn in my –"

Both Elphaba and Dillamond turned towards the door as Galinda burst in through it, wielding a paper fervently. "…my essay on the importance of learning biology…" she finished lamely as she looked between Dillamond, standing beside the table that Elphaba was sat at, her hand resting still on a microscope.

Rather than say more, Galinda took a few more steps into the classroom and thrust her paper towards Doctor Dillamond. He hummed and grasped it between his hooves. "Thank you, Miss Glinda. I shall go put this in my desk…"

As he walked off, Galinda and Elphaba were left staring at each other. Neither of them moved, or said anything at all for a while. Galinda wanted to say something, anything, but she found she didn't really have much to say. When she did speak, her subject was lame and sad. "…What are you doing with the microscope?"

Elphaba jerked a little, as if remembering the thing was there. Miss Galinda could not have come at a worse, or perhaps better time. She shouldn't have interrupted, but… At the same time, Elphaba didn't know where the questioning would have taken her. Down a dark path, maybe, that she didn't necessarily want to go down. Her own response to Galinda was no more intriguing than the question.

"…Biology."

With a scoff, Galinda took a couple steps further into the room so she was close enough to peer onto the table. "I wouldn't hope you'd be doing arithmetic with such high-tech equipment," she retorted in annoyance.

In spite of herself, Elphaba couldn't help the small smirk that lifted her face. "Why, Miss Galinda, was that sarcasm? I dare say I've been an awful influence on you."

"You're incredibly incessant, Miss Elphaba! I hope you know that," Galinda shot back hotly. She glanced towards Doctor Dillamond, hoping for him to dismiss her, but instead he had sat down at his desk and decided to read through her essay right then and there.

Elphaba glanced back at her microscope, remembering the research she had been doing before…and Doctor Dillamond's suggestion for her to obtain the DNA of someone who was both human and normal-colored… "Actually, might I ask your assistance, perhaps?" she inquired.

The blonde sent a hesitant glance towards the equipment. "Why would _you_ need assistance?"

"A personal project," Elphaba gave a wave of her hand. "I merely need samples of DNA to compare. I promise it will be anonymously donated and your name never need to flow from my quill."

Now she was staring at the machinery as if it were on fire. "You're insane," Galinda mumbled. "Absolutely insane. How do I know you won't clone me?"

A slim, dark eyebrow strode smoothly skyward. "If I had the power to clone from DNA, Miss Galinda, I _assure_ you, never would I want another ditzy little blonde around enough to do so with yours," she grinned, and then grabbed a swab from the drawer, holding it out to her roommate. "Now, please, I would so very much appreciate your assistance."

Galinda wasn't sure what made her do it. What made her take the swab and carefully collect tissue on it from the inside of her cheek before handing it back to Elphaba. Why would she help her horrid green roommate? Why would she let green hands touch that which used to be part of her?

And yet, she did it. She retrieved the sample and put it back into green hands. She couldn't help feeling as if she was at Elphaba's mercy, and she hated it. She was being silly, and she knew it, but it somehow felt as if the green girl could control her life with that very sample, and her hands itched to reach out and snatch it back.

For her part, Elphaba looked genuinely surprised for a moment before she regained control of her features. "Thanks," she mumbled, dropping the swab into a bag and sealing it. She didn't want to look at it now, not while Galinda was in the room.

They both kind of glanced towards Dillamond's desk, finding him still ruminating to himself over the essay. Which meant they were both stuck there, in a manner of speaking. Galinda because she had to wait for her essay to be graded and Elphaba because… Because she didn't want to be the first to leave.

Elphaba cleared her throat, the silence suddenly feeling suffocating. She risked a look in Galinda's direction, realizing that there was a monster lurking in her mind that she had to face. "I'm going to be having company next weekend," she said as casually as she could, picking at a loose thread in her dress.

"Oh?" Galinda was surprised. Who in Oz would want to visit Elphaba, of all people? Who would want to actually associate with the prickly cabbage. She didn't say anything more, though, letting Elphaba explain in her own time.

"Yes," Elphaba confirmed, still messing with the thread rather than actually face her roommate. "My sister will be visiting, and my Nanny."

More surprise there. Galinda's pretty blonde eyebrows raised a tiny bit. "I didn't know you had a sister. You've never mentioned her."

"You never asked."

Galinda scoffed. "Like you share enough for me to even have the thought to ask. Who knows? You said you weren't a plant, but how was I supposed to know you were being truthful? What proof do I have?"

 _Proof._

There was that word again. Elphaba rolled her eyes, brushing it off. "My sister, Nessarose, can be a bit much sometimes. I think… I think you might want to remove yourself from the room while she's there."

 _Nessarose_.

That made sense, at least. In fact… It made a lot of sense to Galinda. The mysterious Nessarose, who she once read Elphaba's letter to, was, in fact, her sister. It would make sense that a sister would visit, she supposed. It makes even more sense that she would write to her sister, if no one else.

And yet… It was difficult to picture Elphaba with a sister. To picture Elphaba, as spiny and averse as she was, in any sort of family. Galinda's mind flashed with horror pictures, with images of yet another stubborn green-skinned girl, maybe a little shorter than Elphaba, with her hands on her hips defiantly as she told Galinda off about something or another, far more vocal than the original greenbean.

"She's not green, you know."

… _Oh_. No, Galinda did not know that.

"In case you were wondering," Elphaba smirked knowingly. "Anyway, you've been given your warning. Do with it what you will. I've ought to remove myself to the library now."

Just like that, Elphaba prepared to flee the situation. Galinda merely watched as the green girl gathered her stuff in her bag and stored the DNA swabs in Dillamond's mini-fridge before beginning to shuffle towards the door.

"Of course. Mustn't dally while urgent words are waiting to be read!" Galinda called after her, earning herself a rather obscene and unladylike gesture in return. She crinkled her nose. "Infuriating. Absolutely infuriating. Why, I… I ought to… She…" she groaned and tossed her hands up in frustration.

"Something the matter, Miss Glinda?" Doctor Dillamond asked as he stood from his desk, her essay clasped between his hooves again. He held it out towards her, and she took it a bit sniffily.

"Nothing. Nothing at all, Professor," she muttered in response, and then held the graded essay close to her chest as she took off towards the dormitory to simply be alone.

 **XXX**

Saturday approached far quicker than Elphaba really would have liked. Before she knew it, she was slipping on her overlarge boots after having changed into her dark blouse and skirt in the bathroom, getting ready to leave for Morrible's in just a few minutes.

Galinda was sitting quietly on her bed, having already completed her makeup and hair for the day, merely waiting for her friends to come pick her up for their outing that was planned and watching Elphaba. For once, neither of them said anything – Galinda because she had nothing to say and Elphaba because she was more nervous about her first day than she would let on.

Too soon, it was time for Elphaba to depart, and she glanced at Galinda, silently asking if her clothing looked fine. The blonde shrugged and scooted back to the headrest, grabbing her sketch pad from beside her and beginning to entertain herself.

Realizing she'd receive no help, Elphaba merely grabbed her satchel, smoothed down her blouse, and headed out in the direction of Morrible's office. It didn't take her long to get there, though it felt like a year as she walked towards what could certainly only mean her death.

She admonished herself. Madame Morrible was the headmistress – she surely had no desire to harm any of the students here, and such a silly thought was near-blasphemy. However, that didn't shake the creepy feeling that she still got around the woman.

She knocked twice on Morrible's office, hearing the signature sounds of china clinking and the summon from inside before opening it and stepping in.

Madame Morrible really wore much of the same, however now, rather than red or yellow, her clothing and makeup were themed a nice baby blue. Elphaba cleared her throat and stepped forward. "Madame? I'm here for my first shift."

The headmistress looked her over with a sickly sweet smile. "Yes, dear, you look very nice. You needn't be worried – your task today is a menial one, something I simply do not have time to do myself, you see."

"Of course, Madame."

"Come with me, dear," she stood and beckoned for the green girl to follow as she led the way out of her office and through another door, into a smaller, albeit empty office. "This will be _your_ workspace while you are employed by me. I've already placed your first assignment on your desk."

Elphaba crossed the room and leaned over the desk, noticing a piece of paper with bold words written on it.

 **Madame Morrible's Poetry Soiree**

 **Come experience the magic of poetry, live this very Friday evening in the Shiz buttery at dusk. Concessions will be available, as well as merchandise commemorating the wondrous, monumental event. Come one, come all to the most breathtaking experience ever shown at Shiz University!**

 **Attendance is Mandatory**

 **Evening Classes for Friday shall be Cancelled**

Elphaba read it about five times before looking back at Madame Morrible in confusion. "Madame, you want me to write poetry?" she asked, just barely able to keep the hint of horror out of her voice.

"No, dear, I want you to write me more flyers," she chuckled. "Fifteen more should do, I think. Then, you shall hang them all over campus – and, oh, you can get a boy to put one in the Three Queens – and you shall be done for the day."

The moment Morrible left to go back to her own office, Elphaba set to work on her task, finding a pen and a small stack of paper in a drawer somewhere. It was grueling, but she knew that it was worth it, because the prices in the buttery were far too expensive for her to be siphoning off of Nanny and Nessa for the rest of her Shiz life.

She wasn't certain what she expected her job on her first day would be, but she was equally surprised and unsurprised by the menial chore. Parts of her had been expecting to be scrubbing the floors with her toothbrush. But that was silly, she chastised herself again.

It didn't make sense. She couldn't seem to comprehend why she was so jumpy around the headmistress. Was it more than her creepy aura? Could it have something to do with the carp-like woman pairing her up with Galinda? No, that made even less sense. If the problem wasn't with the headmistress, then it must be with her, Elphaba realized. There must be something about herself that caused her to fear the authoritative figure.

No, that couldn't be right, either. Doctor Dillamond had authority in the classroom – as did every other teacher – and she didn't fear them. It was only Madame Morrible.

When Elphaba returned to Room 22, Galinda was nowhere in sight – likely still out with her dimwitted and uncreative friends. That was perfectly fine – it meant an evening of reading in silence, which was really always acceptable.

Elphaba pulled out the book from Boq. _The Ozian Economy and the History of Us._ A curious title. She didn't hesitate before jackknifing herself on her bed and beginning to read it, holding the book close to her face to be able to make out the small text.

'… _Ever since the dawn of time, Oz has thrived not for its rulership, but for its economy, for the invisible hand that turns the gears, working the two sides in harmony – the producers and the consumers. But what is the invisible hand?_

 _Every man and woman, every producer and consumer in Oz strives for one thing and one thing only – his or her own self-interest. The producers want to make money for themselves and the consumers want to buy things for themselves. These are the puppeteers of the economy…"_

She was hooked from the very first sentence. The invisible hand. What genius! What absolute genius! Elphaba was so raptly captured in her new book that she didn't even notice when her roommate arrived.

How had she never taken up Boq's offer to help before? Why had she been so standoffish as to deny herself the chance to read something real? Again, Shiz Library _had_ real books, just… It also had fake ones, she saw now. _A Brief Study on Demand and Supply_ , as she had been reading earlier, was nothing compared to this new book. It was a small bump on the side of a mountain.

Elphaba was unaware of her roommate's fervent attempts to catch her attention. At least, until pale pink hands unexpectedly closed on each cover of her open book and snatched it away from her, using surprise to avoid any sort of fight back.

Dumbfounded, Elphaba stared down at her hands, where the book had just been. She slowly looked up to where her blonde roommate was waving it tauntingly.

"There," she said triumphantly. "Now you're listening to me. I was just saying how you need to –"

"Give me that back!" Elphaba cried out, lunging for the book. Galinda easily sidestepped her, though, and frowned.

"Honestly, can't you survive without –"

Elphaba gave her a murderous look, and the blonde squeaked and quickly hopped onto her bed as the green woman gave chase.

"You're not allowed on my bed, Miss Elphaba!" she declared.

Defiantly, the Munchkinlander climbed onto the bed, cornering Galinda. "Give me my book back. I was _reading_ that. It's mine."

As if Elphaba wasn't at least six inches taller than her, with arms at least three inches longer, Galinda childishly raised the book above her head and stuck her tongue out. With a vindictive growl, Elphaba launched herself towards her, her hand reaching out and snatching the book away with that unusual, strength of hers.

And that's when she noticed she was sitting partially on top of the blonde. Air seemed to still as they stared at each other, faces mere inches apart. Galinda knew that she should be repulsed, and yet, she couldn't help but fixate on the fact that Miss Elphaba's eyes were not black, as she had originally thought, but instead a deep, warm cocoa.

They sat like that for much longer than either expected, both somewhere between wanting to break the contact immediately – their first contact, really – and wanting to actually see each other for perhaps the first time.

It was a collective separation, both of them cracking together and separating, Elphaba climbing off of Galinda and off of the bed and Galinda moving to sit at her headboard, far from the spot where they had touched.

Elphaba settled herself back on her own bed, trying her best to pretend that nothing had happened. Her roommate, luckily, seemed to have the same idea, for neither said another word that night.

 **A/N: Hope you all enjoyed! Please make sure to read and review! :)**


	7. Chapter 7

**A/N: So sorry for the delay, my beloved readers - unfortunately, university has me rather busy, so I've little time to write nowadays. I wanted to thank you all, once again, for your wonderful reviews - they truly make me very happy to read!**

 **Although this chapter is somewhat late, I think you'd all be delighted to find that this one is also the longest, by a few hundred words. I had fun writing it, still, as the plot begins to pick up some, and I hope you all enjoy reading it.**

 **As I've received a few questions about it, I wanted to mention my plans with Bird of Song, my other strange AU fic. Currently, I have no intentions of continuing it, as sometime between Bird of Song and A Wickless Candle, my writing style shifted somewhat dramatically. Perhaps sometime in the future, I will rewrite the chapters of Bird of Song that are posted, but at the moment, with university keeping me busy, I really only have time to focus on this strange AU fic.**

 **Pushing that aside, here is chapter seven for you all, and I hope it lives up to the wait!**

Chatter was more prominent in the buttery, Elphaba found as she waited in the line for the breakfast bar the following Wednesday morning. Wednesdays were her favorite day of the week because she didn't have a class until the afternoon, so she could study as long as she wanted in the morning. Galinda had an early class, but it must've ended already, as she sat in the buttery with her group of fellow dimwits, giggling about something or another.

There was normally many groups of friends all gossiping throughout the building, but today, it was somehow more incessant, more heated. Elphaba managed to catch bits and pieces of conversations as she filled her plate with coffee cake and boiled eggs.

"…He's supposed to arrive on Monday…"

"…Yeah, all the way from the Vinkus…"

"…I heard he's some sort of royalty…"

"…He's married already, too, with kids!..."

Yes, the buttery was abuzz with chatter, and even more so than usual, Elphaba could not wait to leave. She had no interest in this soon-to-be arriving Vinkun prince of sorts that everyone else seemed to enamored by. She doubted he'd last long in the flow of gossip. Normally, topics died down after a few days – except for, of course, special situations, like how no one ever seemed to get bored of teasing the not-so-friendly local vegetable.

Usually, Elphaba spent no more than fifteen minutes or so in the buttery, now that she had the money to afford it. Frex had not set her up with any sort of meal plan, unfortunately, so all of her food would come out of her own hard-earned stash. Morrible had, indeed, paid her after she had put up all of the posters. It wasn't a lot, but Elphaba tended not to eat lunch, and she was normally holed up in the library by the time dinner rolled around, so that was often missed, too. She ate enough to keep herself nourished, but beyond that, there was no real reason to spend money on food, especially when she still did volunteer in the gardens now and then and did still pilfer when she got hungry enough.

"Miss Elphaba! Oh, Miss Elphaba, over here!"

She was stopped by the sound of her name, glancing to where her summoner was. The voice was coming from… Galinda's table. Galinda was not the one calling her, though. No, that was the short, blonde, pig-nosed girl named Pfannee. She was waving her arms frantically, trying to get the green woman to come.

Elphaba debated leaving anyway, ignoring the ordeal and continuing on with her life. However, Galinda shot her a nervous glance before looking away and for some reason, that was enough to draw Elphaba closer, her hands tight on either side of her plate as she braced herself for the insults that were surely the only reason these ridiculous, vain creatures would want to speak with her.

Her mind briefly flashed to the day when Galinda had betrayed her, those horrible girls more satisfied than anything else when they realized that their water had _hurt_ her and not just humiliated her. If anything, Pfannee had looked the most sadistic of them, that grin stretching practically from ear to ear, her lips parted just slightly to show off pearly white teeth. She had looked almost predatorial, as if she had cornered her prey and knew just how to devour her.

But Elphaba would not be one to show fear. She did not fear these beings of lower intelligence. They knew nothing of what it was like to live on your own, to have to fight every day just to stay alive. In a match, they would stand no chance against her, least of all because of the unnatural strength that had been a direct result of how Frexspar had chosen to construct her. No. She would not be one to fear the lesser beings. They had no power, she reminded herself.

 _Besides knowing that you're allergic to water…_

She chose to ignore that haunting little voice in her mind as she reached the table where Misses Pfannee, Shenshen, Milla, and Galinda sat. "I believe I was summoned?"

Pfannee laughed good-naturedly, wearing a plastic smile. "Oh, Miss Elphaba, you are _such_ a hoot! Please, sit with us, sit! I insist!"

Elphaba looked to Galinda, but the blonde Frottican had become very interested in her drink, stirring her straw around in it and watching the sweetened tea swirl. Shenshen and Milla wore sickly sweet smiles akin to Miss Pfannee's. Elphaba knew that this surely must be a trick or something, and yet, she took the open seat, placing her small plate before her.

Still trying to figure out what these high-society girls were playing at, she sat and began picking at her food, taking a bite of her coffee cake as Pfannee watched her with quiet, rapt interest, waiting for the right moment to strike. However, Elphaba decided to interrupt her plans and take control of the situation. "Odd how you all would invite me over after our previous encounters had ended so horribly. Perhaps I should have reported the incident," she tapped her long, bony finger on her chin as she considered the idea.

Pfannee's face turned red, but she was persistent. "We are truly very sorry about that, Miss Elphaba. In fact, the incident changed us. We want to extend the hand of friendship."

The girl was a fantastic actress, Elphaba had to admit, but that didn't mean that she bought it. No, she was far from trusting, and after being burned already, she wasn't one to believe this sudden change of character. Briefly, she was reminded of something Nessa had told her.

"People don't change, Fabala," Nessa had said. "No matter what they say, or what they do, people are simply incapable of change. Now, I don't mean this in a religious sense. People can convert and praise the Unnamed God and be saved, but the base nature of a person is just that. We are how we were born – or, made."

Narrowing her eyes a little, Elphaba stared down at her coffee cake before forcing a smile on her face and playing along with the little game. After all, she felt more comfortable with that little bit of control. "Well, how truly good of you all," she drawled, her rough voice dripping with sweetness. She had made a point to look straight at Galinda, too, whose face got a little red even though she was still clearly avoiding looking at the green girl.

Shenshen spoke up next, placing her hand on one of Galinda's. "In fact, Galinda here was just telling us about the company you would be keeping this next weekend."

"Your sister," Milla added helpfully.

 _Oh._ Elphaba glared at the blonde Frottican. She had no right to talk about that. No right at all. But that was okay. She could adjust. It wasn't as if she deserved any sort of privacy as the only green person (as documented thus far) in all of Oz. She would just have to adjust.

"Adopted sister, if you would," she smiled, putting on as much confidence as she could muster. "I'm actually her step-cousin, twice removed, but it's far easier to call each other sisters," her smile widened, showing off her teeth. "And we do share everything together, you know…"

Milla made a face at the rather suggestive comment, but the others managed to hold their grimaces back for the most part.

For the first time since Elphaba's arrival, Galinda raised her head and spoke up. "Why did you want me out of the room while she's there?"

That caught Elphaba by surprise. She considered how to answer the question. "My sister is… Stubborn. And religious. Dramatic, but of course, so is everyone else under the Thropp name. I'd be surprised if she didn't try to convert you to Unionism within the first five minutes of meeting you. She's rather a handful, overall."

Pfannee wrinkled her nose, which was quite an ugly look on her – well, uglier than usual. "Is she horrific, like you, greenbean?"

"She's a perfectly normal color, if that's what you mean," Elphaba rolled her eyes. "She is just… Well, a tad bit disfigured, I suppose."

There were gasps and murmurs around the table from the other four girls sitting there. Galinda, for one, winced as she imagined a two-headed girl, or worse, a headless girl (was that worse?). A terrifying creature with two mouths and five eyes, or the legs of an arachnid. A monster of improper breeding and make, even uglier than her twice-removed step-cousin. From the looks on her friends' faces, she could tell that they were having similar thoughts.

While Shenshen and Milla looked disgusted, Pfannee only seemed sadistically intrigued. She leaned forward on her elbow, her chin propped up with her hand. "She sounds nauseating," she drawled.

At that, Elphaba's eyes narrowed. "I adore her," she spat. "Anyone who has a problem with my Nessarose will have to take it up with me. Unfortunately, I'm not quite as polite or refined as she is, so I would suggest not having a problem at all."

With that, she grabbed her plate and put it on the nearest dish rack, leaving before another word could be put in on either side.

 **XXX**

Shiz University had been in session for a whole month, and yet, it felt so much longer to both residents of Room 22. Within her classes, Elphaba had learned much – more than she could have gleaned while she huddled in her little alleyway in Quadling Country, trying to learn and distinguish not one, but two languages. Her library, _Quov's Ozian Books_ , had been funny that way. It had contained novels from both languages – primarily Ozian, actually, hence the name of the place. Many of the Gillikinese and Munchkinlanders and the sort that lived in Quadling Country, few though they were, frequented the place.

Ozian and Qua'ati were very distinctly different languages, and it was with that distinction and the fact that some books were written in one and some in the other that helped Elphaba to learn that they were not, in fact, the same manner of speaking.

Although she had learned languages and books and information in marshy Quadling Country, she had known very little of what it was like to be part of society. Nessa and Nanny had helped her get a taste of it, but Shiz University was where she would never stop learning, she suspected, about society as well as her curricular studies. It was exhausting, sometimes, to learn so much, to try to gather all of this information that others spent an entire lifetime, eighteen or more years, understanding.

If she had been born from a mother like a regular girl, if she had gotten to live the full eighteen years she falsely claims to have lived, then perhaps she'd have a much easier time figuring people out. Due to her circumstances, however, it was extremely difficult to understand motivations and psychology of her peers, especially when they were as back-and-forth as Miss Galinda.

Miss Galinda, who would burn her and then apologize and then isolate her. Miss Galinda, who would ignore her for a whole week and then steal her book. Miss Galinda, who seemed at once repulsed and intrigued by her as if she were some wicked experiment or a dead body that one found on the side of the road.

That thought made her shudder involuntarily. She was very much alive, no matter what Frexspar would call her. Her life was small, and difficult, but it was precious, and it was perhaps the only thing she could truly call her own. After all, she had deigned to attend university, to go that direction with her life. That had been her choice, and she had spent many days and nights traveling and foraging to get to Nest Hardings so that she could make it happen, for she knew that she alone could not do so. Not without a name, or a background. Universities were highly cautious creatures. She didn't know what she would have done if not for Nanny and Nessa, for Frexspar himself had very little interest regarding interactions with her in general.

One requirement of the university was that each dorm of girls had an ama watching over them to keep them out of trouble. Elphaba was grateful that she wasn't in a larger dorm – she could hardly handle one roommate, let alone fourteen. Finally, after a month in the wonderful (if misogynistic) institution, Room 22 was going to have an ama.

Elphaba had a passing understanding that something had happened to Miss Galinda's ama – something involving a rusty nail, if she heard right – but now, the older woman had recovered, and would be arriving today.

"I am happy as cheese to be your ama too, don't matter to me," Ama Clutch had said as she smiled broadly to Elphaba, not five seconds after walking into Room 22. Elphaba could only stand there, stunned, and by the look on Miss Galinda's face, she was in a similar boat.

"Of course, my Papa is paying you to be _my_ ama," Miss Galinda insisted, her voice a tad pathetic.

Ama Clutch just grinned and opened the curtains, letting sunlight into the room. "Not as much as all that, duckie, not as much as all that. I can be making up my own mind."

Unable to muster any sort of proper reaction, Elphaba merely excused herself and fled the room.

Alone now with her ama and fueled by her lack of reaction, Galinda huffed. "Ama, are you blind? Miss Elphaba is _green_ ," she stressed.

"Odd, isn't it? I thought all Munchkinlanders were tiny. She's a proper height, though. I guess they come in a variety of sizes. Oh, are you bothered by the green? Well, it might do you some good if you let it. If you _let_ it. You affect worldly airs, Galinda, but you don't know the world yet. I think it's a lark. Why not? Why ever not?"

Wholly frustrated now with her ama, Galinda scoffed and decided to take a shower to wash off Ama Clutch's commentary. It might do her some good if she _let_ it. Galinda rolled her eyes as she stripped down and started the water, letting it soothe her. What had Ama Clutch meant?

They had been there for four weeks, and so far, Miss Elphaba's greenness had been nothing short of irritating. It really wasn't that awful a shade, but it certainly wasn't natural. Of anyone that Galinda could have been paired with, why was she paired with Miss Elphaba, the single most unnatural girl in Oz? She was sarcastic and rude and simultaneously the most literal and nonliteral person that Galinda had met in her life.

It all boiled down to the green, she told herself. She despised Miss Elphaba because of the green, because of that which made her so different. Everything else – disposition and tongue – were all a byproduct of the green. Some part of her knew that it didn't make sense, but it was what she clung to still, because she simply couldn't understand how, upon meeting Miss Elphaba with her skin and her hawk-like face and her drab clothing and her silky hair and her damn cocoa-colored eyes, the only thing Ama Clutch bothered to comment on was her height.

If she _let_ it. She scoffed again. What absolute rubbish. If she let it. She had known Ama Clutch since she was ten years old, and yet, the woman was still so daft sometimes. Perhaps it _was_ better that she only supervised two girls rather than fifteen, because there really seemed to be something wrong with her, even if it wasn't quite what Galinda had explained to Madame Morrible in a hasty defense against the pink dormitory.

Was that planned? She couldn't help but wonder. Did Madame Morrible truly see right through her in that moment, and so, paired her with the weird, verdant girl from Ev as punishment for her lies?

When Galinda was finally cooled off enough to get out of the shower and dry herself, she found that she hadn't grabbed a new outfit, and, well… She wasn't about to wear her old one, even if it had only been worn for five hours of the day so far. The implications were just disgustifying.

Towel wrapped around her body, she opened the door to the main part of the bedroom, and found that Ama Clutch had retired to her little annex, and the verdant plague had returned. Elphaba glanced up in boredom at her when she entered, but quickly looked back down to her book, her face coloring a darker shade of green in what Galinda could only assume was a blush.

"Miss Galinda," Elphaba began hesitantly. "Might I ask why you are indecent?"

Rolling her eyes, Galinda crossed to her wardrobe. "I didn't have a change of clothes. Besides, I have a towel on. I'm not completely bare." She picked out a pretty sundress, knowing that she wouldn't be able to wear something so revealing for too much longer lest she turn into an icicle every time she walked to or from a class. "Don't look," she told her roommate before dropping her towel and beginning to change right then and there.

"I have no intention to…" Elphaba muttered, and was going to leave it at that, but… She was rather a contradictory person by nature, and when she was told not to do something, it really just made the urge to do it all that more pressing. Eventually, the curiosity of her three year-old mind won out (in conjunction with the need to defy all orders she could, of course), and she glanced up at Miss Galinda.

Er, meant to glance.

However, the sight of soft, pearlescent skin and damp blonde curls, darkened with water, stopped her. She suddenly found it very difficult to breathe, struggling to focus on anything besides the smooth, pale back that was presented to her. Something rather alarming was happening in her chest and stomach, but she deigned not to focus on that at the moment.

Seconds felt like minutes, and Elphaba was sure that her face was a dark spinach color by the time she was able to tear her eyes away, forcibly planting her gaze on the book in her lap. As she listened to the rustling of Miss Galinda getting dressed, she tried to read the passage she was on, only to find, after the fourth attempt, that she simply couldn't. She couldn't do anything, really, except imagine the soft, pale skin that she had seen not a minute ago.

Taking a silent deep breath to calm herself, she closed up _The Rose and the Pearl_ and put it away on her shelf, instead withdrawing the book that she had obtained from Boq last week – a book which, mind, she had already read through twice now, but still found enriching information in every time she reread it.

Not soon enough, she thought, Miss Galinda had finished dressing herself. "Might I ask you not to dress while I am present?" she asked in irritation, somehow managing to keep her voice at the normal, level annoyance she typically chastised her roommate with.

Her blonde roommate tossed her a withering look. "Jealous, greenbean?" she taunted, and then moved to her vanity and began working on her makeup, letting her hair air-dry. "It's probably nothing you haven't seen before, anyway. We're both girls."

"Not by choice…" Elphaba muttered as she brought her book closer to her face.

That caught Galinda's attention. She paused, turning her head to glance at her roommate out of the corner of her eye. "What was that?" she asked gently, but upon receiving no response, turned her chair around to fully face Elphaba. "'Not by choice', Miss Elphaba?"

Her face flushed, Elphaba squinted down at the words on her book, her sharp mind too befuddled to truly comprehend their meaning. "Yes, that is what I said…"

"Well, then," Galinda breathed, her curiosity piqued. "If you had a choice, what _would_ you choose?"

Elphaba was taken aback. "I never really…" she began, but found that she could not finish the sentence. She lowered her book and narrowed her eyes at a spot on the wall. "I don't know, Miss Galinda. I suppose female is as good as any other, though so commonly a victim of misogyny. Did you know that there are classes that are closed to us?"

Yes. Galinda did know that. She looked away, fixating her gaze on the ground. "I'm an architecture major, Miss Elphaba," she said softly. "It was no easy feat to become such as a female."

That caught Elphaba's attention. She stared at the Frottican, her eyebrows knit together. "I did not even consider that. I'm sorry. It was that important to you?"

"Of course," Galinda sighed, meeting her warm eyes again. "It's all I've ever wanted to do. Design buildings. Study how space is utilized. How stones can become homes. How they can be built to withstand the extremes of weather." Her voice was quiet as she spoke, but her roommate heard every word.

"I… admire that," Elphaba admitted. "Deciding your own life. Doing what you wish to do in spite of everyone and everything that tries to stop you."

Galinda's mind briefly flashed to a disapproving female face, tightly-wound blonde curls framing it – much tighter than her own. "Yes…" she agreed slowly, not quite sure of what else to say.

Looking back down at her book, Elphaba remembered the day, almost a week ago, when Boq had given it to her, and what she'd promised him. She was not a liar. "Do you know the second year Munchkin boy, Boq?" she changed the subject.

Blue eyes fixated back on her, narrowed ever so slightly. "I don't believe I do," she said slowly. "Why?"

With a nonchalant shrug, Elphaba began picking at a loose thread on her old gray blanket. "Blond. Gray eyes. Short. Kind of looks amphibian, but charming in his own way."

Her roommate now looked a bit uncomfortable. "No, I'm sure I don't know him. Biq, you said?"

"Boq."

"Boq," Galinda corrected herself. "Why do you want to know if I know him?"

Elphaba didn't respond for a minute, trying to find the best way to word what even she didn't fully comprehend. Boq had seen enamored with her roommate, unable to keep his eyes off of her once he'd noticed her. However, every time Elphaba tried to describe it to herself, she was met with the same confusion that arose in _The Rose and the Pearl_ when the Quadling would become obsessed with the slavemaster's wife, and everything the two of them would do together thereafter.

"Master Boq would like to meet you," she settled on, for it portrayed the truth without forcing her to try to articulate what she could not understand for herself.

Somehow, though, Miss Galinda still seemed horrified by the answer. "An amphibian Munchkin would like to meet me?" she asked, her voice a full octave higher than it should be.

Wincing, Elphaba tried to backtrack. "Well, no, he's not amphibian. I'm just perhaps not the best at describing. He's really a kind being, if you give him a chance. He gave me a book that I, as a female, should not have access to, simply because he would not stand for the misogynistic tendencies of the university. Isn't that… endearing?"

She was clearly struggling, but Galinda was perhaps struggling even more. Her face was red as a beet, and she seemed absolutely mortified. "Miss Elphaba, is this Munchkin in love with me, do you think?" She wouldn't be surprised. She had, in her life, left many broken-hearted boys behind – just, usually, the vegetable she lived with wasn't trying to set her up with one.

Frustrated, Elphaba stood up abruptly. "I don't know, Galinda!" she shouted before considering what she'd say. "Look, I don't know. I don't even know what that means. People use these vague words and phrases, and no one ever explains what they mean. They are, like, some societal secret. I don't know. All I know is that he wants to meet you, and he called you beautiful, and he asked me if I thought the same. That's all I know. Okay?"

Galinda was taken aback by her roommate's sudden outburst. Miss Elphaba was usually more structured and contained than this. Her answers were lashes – they were little quips of sarcastic cynicism and taunting. She was briefly reminded of the evening when her friends had burned the green girl, how lengthy Miss Elphaba's rant to her afterwards was.

"You dropped my honorific…" was all she was able to muster as she stared up at her verdant roommate.

Letting out a sigh, Elphaba sat back down on her bed, not meeting the Frottican's gaze. "…I suppose I did. I apologize."

"N-no, it's really alright," Galinda insisted, as confused by what she was saying as Elphaba looked. "In private, at least. We _are_ roommates, after all. You… You can call me Galinda, as long as it's not in front of my dimwitted friends."

Elphaba looked up at her in surprise. "You call them dimwitted?" she asked. "I mean, don't get me wrong, they are. I've just never heard you refer to them as such."

Before she could stop herself, Galinda let out a snort, then paused in embarrassment as she tried to shake off the unladylike habit. "One would be hardpressed to call them the brightest bulbs in the box," she retorted.

"Indeed," Elphaba hummed in amusement and agreement. "Why do you still spend time with them, then?"

Galinda frowned a little, staring at the wall in thought. "Strategy," she settled on. "I need to marry once I've completed university – sooner, if you ask my mother. My family isn't as wealthy as others are led to believe, though. Don't get me wrong, we're much wealthier than your average family, but Frottica is not necessarily sophisticated."

Her roommate raised an eyebrow. "And you want to marry rich?" she guessed.

"Not rich," Galinda corrected. " _Loaded_. That's how I've always thought of it, anyway. My family is rich, in a sense of the word. Those other girls, Pfannee and Shenshen and Milla? They come from _loaded_ families. Honestly. If you think my wardrobe is large, you should see theirs. Their shoe collections cost more than my entire wardrobe."

Elphaba still couldn't quite understand it. "So, you spend time with these girls, but purely for strategic purposes?" she clarified.

"Well, not purely," Galinda sighed. "I do enjoy their company to an extent. They can become a bit much, yes, but… In small doses, I suppose. I also was raised around family that liked to pretend they were part of the class that the girls are from – loaded."

"So, you speak their language?"

"I speak many languages, societally."

Looking away, Elphaba considered that. Perhaps that was why she struggled in society. She just didn't speak any of their languages. She knew Ozian well enough, but these foreign words – 'love' and 'beauty' – they meant very little to her, much as Glikkun would, she suspected, for she didn't speak Glikkun, and she didn't speak Society. "I speak Qua'ati," she revealed at random.

Galinda shot her an odd look. "And wherever did you learn that, Miss Elphaba the Delirious?" she questioned. "You lived in Munchkinland, if I'm not mistaken."

Elphaba couldn't help a small smile. "Elphaba the Delirious. I like that. Please drop the honorific, though, if I am to do the same for you," she insisted. "No, you are not mistaken. I did live in Munchkinland most recently, and I come from a Munchkinlander family, but most of my life was spent in Quadling Country."

"Is that why your feet are burned?"

She glanced down at her bare feet in surprise. The bottoms were blackened – they had always been, though. She remembered very little from the first day she was alive, and most of it involved pain. The pain, however, was generic. She couldn't remember where it was – her legs, her chest, her stomach, her back, her feet, they were all potential candidates that she simply couldn't remember.

"I never even considered that…" she mumbled with a small shake of her head. "I can't recall ever having feeling in them."

Galinda wasn't sure how to respond to that, so she simply didn't. She turned back around and focused on her makeup again, realizing that she had been distracted from it. One thing did bug her, though. It had been a while back in the conversation, and her roommate had passed over it very briefly, but Galinda didn't forget. Of course not. Her innate need for validation simply didn't allow her, she thought with no small amount of self-loathing. It was that very necessity that formed the question on the tip of her tongue, and she couldn't hold back from asking it.

"…And do you, Elphaba the Delirious? Think I'm beautiful, that is?"

With a defeated sigh, Elphaba slouched back on her bed, staring hard at the book she had abandoned. She was shutting down, Galinda could tell. She was shrinking back into safety and warmth rather than explore the new, unfamiliar territory.

"Ask me again in a few weeks," Elphaba finally said. "Perhaps then, I may have an answer for you."

 **XXX**

Two days later was the evening of Madame Morrible's poetry soiree. Having copied it over a dozen times, Elphaba practically had the date committed to heart. She had had to point out to her blonde roommate that it was _mandatory_ to attend, and while she herself wasn't necessarily eager to go to it – poetry spun her head in circles – she knew that upsetting her employer perhaps wasn't the best idea. Even if it made her wish for a surprise thunderstorm so that she wouldn't have to listen to anymore quells.

Madame Morrible's writing was flouncy but uninspiring, much like the fishy woman herself, Elphaba realized. There was no rhyme or reason to most of the lines – only the last line of the poem, which would stand out with a completely off-topic and typically bold statement. Those last lines were the only truly memorable things about the quells, though. People would politely snap after each one (something that Elphaba realized she did _not_ know how to do, and so, just pretended she did), but it was a mindless snapping, as if all of the students and faculty present formed one drowsy creature, trained to respond in a certain way at each interval and so well-trained to still do it in spite of its drowsiness.

For her part, Madame Morrible didn't seem to really notice that no one was paying full attention to her poetry, if it could be called such. She bowed deeply after each and every one and beamed at the tired snapping that would resound. Elphaba supposed it was for the best. After all, a happy headmistress made for a happy school. That was how the saying went, wasn't it? Her version, at least.

"Animals should be seen and not heard."

 _Whoa_. That caught Elphaba's attention. Judging by the hesitation before the snapping, the slight level of mumbling that arose, and the fact that others who had been on the verge of falling asleep now snapped their heads up, she knew that it had caught others' attention, too. Alas. The slumbering creature had awoken, and for the most part, it didn't seem all to happy.

"Well, that's not poetry, that's propaganda, and it's not even good propaganda, at that!" Dillamond was sputtering, off with the other faculty. Elphaba eyed him for a moment, considering approaching him and starting a discussion. However, she also noticed Miss Galinda – for, in public, she could call her nothing but – shifting uncomfortably in her seat as Miss Milla dozed off, Miss Shenshen picked at her cuticles, and Miss Pfannee snapped livingly for the quell.

The poem, if it could be called such, seemed to have unnerved Miss Galinda, and Elphaba found herself growing ever curious as to what the Frottican thought of it. Of course, if she asked her, she knew that Miss Galinda would deny thinking anything of it, but if conversations past taught her anything, it was that Miss Galinda _did_ think. She just pretended she didn't.

Was that one of the societal languages she had mentioned? Elphaba wondered. To act as if one was dumber than one was, stooping publicly to the level of lower beings. There was certainly no strategy to woo them later – Miss Galinda didn't seem as if she were ever going to try to discuss that with her friends what she would on occasion discuss with her roommate. It was merely… a language. Something that Elphaba did not, could not understand, but something that worked for Miss Galinda regardless. There must be something to it, then, if it worked.

Briefly, Elphaba wondered how many unspoken thoughts went through that blonde head. She couldn't imagine it'd be a small number.

At some point, she could stand it no longer. She knew that her roommate thought – she was not going to be fooled – and she needed to discuss this with someone. Dillamond seemed far too upset to be a candidate for unbiased conversation. So, with all the grace of a drunken bird, she took her chair in her hand and dragged it across the floor, sitting it right next to Miss Galinda's and then collapsing into it unceremoniously.

The look on Miss Galinda's face was picture-perfect. She was horrified, her blue eyes wide and her pretty little eyebrows drawn together slightly. Elphaba decided to silence her before she had a chance to tell her off.

"What do you make of this?" she inquired. "I mean, it's genius in a way, isn't it? 'Animals should be seen and not heard'. With that fancy faux Emerald City accent of hers, one can't really tell whether she meant animals or Animals. Given the current political climate, one could guess one way or the other, but whether or not the slight inflection was there is indeterminable."

Galinda stared at her in complete social terror. It was the first time Elphaba had ever addressed her in public. "Miss Elphaba, what are you _doing_ here?" she hissed.

Glancing down at her chair, Elphaba gave a small shrug. "Sitting?"

"Must you be so literal?" Galinda sighed in frustration. "You're certainly bright enough to know just what I mean."

Considering this new development – she was certainly bright enough to do so, you know – Elphaba tilted her head to the side a little, her hair falling with the angle. "Well, alright then. I'm discussing. It is awfully hard to do so without a partner, I've found. I choose you. What do you make of this?"

Looking desperately around them, Galinda tried to make sure no one had noticed Miss Elphaba's change in position yet. "Really, Miss Elphaba, leave me alone, won't you?" she pleaded with tears prickling at the back of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," Elphaba cocked her head as she looked at her roommate. "I don't speak your language. Perhaps we could just stick to Ozian? Unless you happen to know Qua'ati, but I doubt such a high society girl such as yourself would ever have-"

"Miss Elphaba, _really_ ," Galinda shot her a withering look that might have felled a lesser opponent, but merely bounced off of her green roommate. "Enough of this. You are being… childish."

"Am I?" Elphaba asked in surprise. "Having no childhood, I cannot argue this point."

With a sigh, Galinda finally gave in. "Knowing you as you are, I wouldn't be all that surprised if you _had_ just popped into being, fully-formed, at age eighteen, just in time to torture the unfortunate she who might be trapped as your roommate," she let out in a rush.

Elphaba quirked up a single eyebrow. "Impressive. You can't fool me, Miss Galinda. I know you think. I know you do. You prove it to me, over and over. It's as if your societal filter just falls away – Ozian. You've just proven you can speak it." She gestured back towards the stage, where Madame Morrible was wrapping up her quells. "What do you make of this?" she asked for the third time.

Realizing there was no winning this battle, Galinda waved the metaphorical white flag. "Alright, Miss Elphaba," she breathed. "I don't see that the distinction between animal or Animal is really necessary in a statement like the one she made. Would it really make that much of a difference? On one hand, she might just be saying that animals should be muzzled, but with the names being near-identical, no person can hear one without thinking ever so briefly of the other, so regardless of which she meant, the names themselves are so menial and insignificant that the line delivers each purpose simultaneously."

Now, Elphaba had been expecting for the blonde to have something to say, but this surprised her beyond measure. Miss Galinda had perhaps thought more into the notion than she had, and that was saying something, truly.

"What you're saying," she responded slowly, "is that it's in the name? The key is in the name?"

Galinda looked at her pathetically. "What I am saying is that nothing is in the name."

A bony green finger tapped on the corresponding chin in thought. "That does beg a question, though, doesn't it? What _is_ a name? Do we ever ask ourselves that, or do we just accept them as social conventions?" she pondered aloud.

"I don't know," Galinda sighed. "Here, look at it this way," she turned a little so that she was facing her roommate. "Your own name – Elphaba. It is no doubt derived from the Saint Aelphaba, is it not? You know the story, yes?" At her roommate's blank stare, she gave a small, irritated shake of her head. There was no pleasing the green leech. "Saint Aelphaba was a bookish woman – sound familiar? – who also happened to not be very social. She was quite beautiful, though – and that is where the familiarity ends, I'm afraid – and many men ached for her hand. Tired of it all, she took a book and a basket of grapes, if I'm not mistaken, and disappeared behind a waterfall. Does this story mean anything for your own life?"

Elphaba thought about it. "Well, if I were to go through a waterfall, it would be _quite_ the horrific death."

"Besides that," Galinda rolled her eyes. "Do the actions of Saint Aelphaba, whose name yours is derived from, have any bearing on your life?" she pressed.

"I suppose not."

"And that is precisely it, Miss Elphaba. A name means nothing. No matter your name, you would still be a horrid green nuisance. You would still enjoy your studies. You would still have interest in biology. With the quell, it's much of the same. No matter which name she said, the implications are _there_."

Elphaba was completely taken aback by her roommate. She had been expecting a thought, but not a fully-formed analysis with examples to back it up. "You're brilliant," she murmured. "Why do you always feel compelled to hide it?"

The Frottican blushed and turned away, looking around once again to make sure they had not drawn any unwanted attention. _Oz_ , if any eligible boys had seen the vegetable talking to her, and her actually _responding_ … Her life would be over. Completely over. Why had she engaged? She couldn't quite figure it out, but regardless, it was over, so hopefully, Miss Elphaba would get the hint and stalk off to her books to consider the proposed information.

For once in her ozdamned life, Elphaba actually complied with what someone else wished her to do. She moved her chair back to its original spot and left the buttery without another word spoken.

Galinda's friends, luckily, didn't say anything, and were likely too preoccupied with themselves to really notice the conversation in the first place. The reception occurred, with refreshments provided, and Galinda was able to be in peace and converse with mediocre men as she deigned.

After the reception, she went out to a late dinner with her friends, returning just before curfew. Once in her dorm again, Galinda found Miss Elphaba with a book, as per usual. However, this time, the green girl didn't seem to actually be reading it.

It was almost as if her mind was elsewhere, Galinda thought as she undid and combed through her hair. Surely, by now, she would have heard a page turn, but no pages shifted.

"Green penny for your thoughts?" she asked gently at one point.

Elphaba flinched as if coming out of a trance and gave her head a little shake. "What would you do, Galinda? If given a choice?" she responded quietly.

The vague questions meant nothing to the blonde and she looked at her roommate in puzzlement. "I'm sure I don't know what you mean."

Finally, Elphaba met her gaze. "If you could disappear behind a waterfall and be at peace. Would do you it?"

The Frottican shifted uncomfortably in the chair that sat at her vanity. She felt herself slowly slipping back into pretenses, back into Miss Galinda Arduenna of the Upper Uplands of Frottica, away from the girl who would discuss such silly topics. She didn't know what caused it, the shift – perhaps the question itself, but she found herself unable to answer it straightly.

"If it meant being away from _you_ , Miss Elphaba," she said pointedly, purposefully adding the honorific back even though they were in the company of only each other, "then I would disappear behind a thousand waterfalls. It was awful, what you did today. Confronting me in _public_. I was mortified. And then asking my opinion. In public." She shuddered. "That was absolutely horrific."

Elphaba narrowed her eyes and gave her head a little shake. "Nevermind. I suppose you wouldn't get it anyway," she mumbled and put her book away, turning off the lamp by her bed. "Fresh dreams, Galinda."

Galinda was shocked by the cold tone her roommate had suddenly taken. Swallowing hard, she decided to just let it be.

"Fresh dreams, Elphaba."

 **XXX**

"Thank you very much for meeting with me, Master Bfee."

The gray-haired Munchkin shifted in his seat, uncomfortable in the unfamiliar setting. The room was decorated, overly so. There was trophies adorning a shelf, though they were indeterminate and vague. The woman sat across from him was as unnecessarily decorated as her office. She was a despicable woman – he could tell that much just at a glance.

Parts of him wished he had stayed home, back in his little cottage in Munchkinland. The request, the letter, it had been too… intriguing, though. Too accurate. No one had ever believed them before. For this woman to reach out to him about it, to immediately give credit to their claims… It was worth looking into.

"And you, as well, for your correspondence, Madame."

She smiled, sickly sweet, and placed her teacup on its plate. "Of course, my dear. Now, what is it, exactly, that happened that day."

Bfee swallowed hard, closing his eyes and leaning back in his chair. It was only three years ago, but he remembered it, clear as day. "It was the first time I had ever been in Quadling Country. I had been trying to draw back a preacher I had known in Nest Hardings. One of my best. We were in a small town just outside of Ovvels when it came through. A human-like creature, or so it seemed. It had a mess of dark hair crowding its face, and wore nothing more than a loosely-fitting lab coat."

"And its skin?"

"Green as sin," he breathed. "I didn't see it when it first came in. Only when it lunged towards my son. The town slowly came out of hiding, and we attacked it, effectively scaring it off."

"Where had it come from?"

Shaking his head, he ran a hand through his hair. "Beats me. You'd be best to ask my son that. It was a miserable, humid day, and he was the only one out at the time it first arrived. I don't want him to know I was here, Madame. The day traumatized him."

Her smile grew ever wider. "That will be all. Thank you, Master Bfee."

"You'll let me know if you find it? I'd like to finish what I started."

"Of course, Master Bfee. Of course," she promised.

 **A/N: Hope you all enjoyed! If you liked it, or even if you didn't, make sure to leave a review, letting me know what you think, or what you think might happen, or perhaps just telling me about your day if you so fancy ahah. Reviews keep a writer writing!**


	8. Chapter 8

**A/N: I know I said that last chapter was the longest so far, and it was, but this one actually surpassed it still by about 150 words. It was unexpected, and part of the reason why it took longer to get up. Still, here it is, so I hope you all enjoy it, and its length!**

The carriage itself was rather plain and anticlimactic as it pulled up to the sidewalk. It was a dull brown color with tinted windows, a sad thing being pulled by two tired horses. There was so much meaning behind this weary old thing, though, Elphaba thought as she watched it approach, knowing instantly that it was the one she had been waiting for.

She was sitting alone on the bench, her attention having been drawn from the textbook laying in her lap by the sound of the hooves. She had been stressing about the arrival of Nessarose and Nanny for two weeks, ever since she got the letter announcing their visit. Part of her told her, throughout the two weeks, that she was being silly. She knew Nessa. She knew Nanny. They knew her. Or, thought they did. She wasn't quite sure whether or not they actually did. Not knowing herself, it was hard to determine if others knew her.

The idea of identity had been near the forefront of her mind since last night, at the poetry soiree. She had always felt somewhat uncomfortable giving herself any sort of label. She had told Nessa and Nanny once, when she returned to Munchkinland and found them wandering the roads, that her name was what Frexspar had called her. To her, it hardly felt like more than that. How could it? It was not a thing that was meant for her. It was meant for the child that he had lost.

That was what she was meant to be, anyway. Just a replica, or a replacement. It was not her choice. That was what she had said to him. She had called herself an 'unwilling creation'. Did she know more then than she knew now? Was she anything more than that? It was wholly frustrating, this whole idea of identity. Was she anything more than a replacement for the child that an unstable man never got to have?

She silently cursed Galinda for bringing the topic up, and simultaneously cursed herself for asking it. The issue would have arisen eventually, she was sure, but she should have had more time. That was it. Time. She needed time to learn these social languages before she even knew what identity _was_ , let alone how it pertained to her, and if she even had one to begin with. How could she? She was different than anyone else in Oz, but for the life of her, she didn't know what that _meant_.

Briefly, her mind flashed back to her very first day at Shiz, after the long train ride. The ama meeting where she had so fatefully been placed with Miss Galinda Arduenna.

" _Shall I invite… the Thropp Third Descending, of Nest Hardings, Elphaba?"_

She hadn't paid the incident, or the title, much mind since there had been so much going on, but now it seemed almost ironic with the predicament she was in. Just another label. Just another thing that others used to define her. She wanted to laugh. Why ever not?

Stewing in her own bitterness, she almost didn't notice when the door to the carriage opened. When it did, it took Elphaba a couple of seconds to blink away the irritation at her lack of knowledge regarding societal languages and focus on the old woman uncomfortably extracting herself from the coach.

"Is that you, my Fabala?" Nanny crooned as she reached solid ground again. Elphaba stood up obligingly as Nanny hobbled closer and then wrapped the green girl in her arms. At the contact, Elphaba had stiffened, but if Nanny noticed, she didn't say anything about it. Instead, she pulled back and went on adoringly. "Oh, you look so grown-up, my darling! And your boots! You're absolutely nothing of that terrified little beastling that once-"

"Nanny!"

The old woman stopped as she heard Nessa call impatiently from the cab. She sighed and fully extracted herself from Elphaba. "Nanny's coming, my pet," she called as she went back towards the carriage and reached in. Nessa had managed to scoot to the side with the open door, and Nanny reached her arms in, gently guiding her down to the ground.

Elphaba was still standing rigidly, having hardly moved and having said nothing thus far. Nessa gazed upon her with pursed lips as Nanny brought her closer with a supporting hand on her lower back.

For a long while, the two of them just stared at each other, Elphaba wanting to break the eye contact or say something, but not daring to. Nessa was a full head shorter than her, and yet, the pretty brunette had an air of superiority and confidence about her that Elphaba couldn't match.

She tried, though, staring down into her sister's chestnut eyes. Nanny shifted uncomfortably beside them, and then Nessa smiled, and in spite of herself, Elphaba reciprocated. Nessa's smile was just… _like that_. Contagious.

Nessa looked down and lightly toed at Elphaba's boots with her own sparkly blue slippers. "You have shoes," she observed in amusement.

Smirking, Elphaba gave a small salute, already feeling herself relax. "I daresay I'm close to becoming a full-fledged member of society now."

Rolling her eyes, Nessa looked back up. "You're a toddler," she reminded her. "And besides, shoes don't make people. People make people."

"In more ways than one."

Nessa scoffed and shifted uncomfortably. "You're impossible. Do you care to show us to your room? It's a bit windy out here."

Glancing around, Elphaba realized that it was. Odd. She hadn't noticed before. Looking back towards the biology textbook she had been reading ahead in for Dillamond's class, she blamed her obtuseness on that. Turning towards it, she carefully slid the book into her satchel that was lying on the ground and slung the strap over her shoulder.

"Crage Hall is about a ten minute walk from here. It's not far, I promise."

No more than a minute passed before Nessa began her badgering. "You know, you hardly answered any of my questions in your last letter. I considered pestering you in form of writing, but then I realized, oh, I'd be seeing you in person."

"And it's so much easier to nag in person."

"Of course," Nessa raised an eyebrow in a familiar way. There was a pause. "Do you care to explain why you avoided my questions?"

 _Not particularly_ , Elphaba thought, but she didn't dare to say it out loud. "I suppose I forgot," she lifted one shoulder nonchalantly.

Nessa was unconvinced. "Really. You _forgot_. That's the lamest excuse in the book, Elphaba."

"No, I'm serious," Elphaba pressed. "I was genuinely so excited about my job that I could hardly think of much else – besides the library, of course."

"You didn't sound excited about the job."

"I was tired when I wrote it."

Nessa didn't respond to that, but it seemed like she didn't believe her sister for a clock tick. A silence fell over them again before she soldiered on, undeterred. "Surely, you don't live alone. How many roommates do you have?"

Elphaba picked up the pace a little so that Nessa and Nanny couldn't see her face. Nanny complained about the speed not being good for her 'old bones', and Elphaba slacked a little in sympathy. She should've known that Nessa would ask about her living situation, despite being so close to seeing it. She hoped, for a moment, that Galinda had taken her advice and cleared out of Room 22 for the weekend.

"Just one."

She could feel the other Thropp eyeing her suspiciously. "And here I was, worried you'd be rooming with fifteen," she said airily.

Elphaba cleared her throat. "Yes, well, my roommate had an ama who was ill at the time. She just arrived this week. I was randomly assigned to the room by the headmistress."

"Your employer."

"My employer."

Nessa paused again, and Elphaba knew she was thinking. "And your roommate? What is her name?"

Walking a bit faster again, Elphaba felt relief flood her as Crage Hall came into sight. "Miss Galinda Arduenna, of the Upper Uplands of Frottica," she recited.

"Frottica?" Nanny near about squawked. "Why, Frottica's filled to the brim with uneducated rich folk who treat the rest of the world like –"

"How do you get on with this Miss Galinda?" Nessa interrupted unabashedly.

Rather than answer, Elphaba gestured towards Crage Hall as they approached it. "This is my dorm building, Crage Hall. My room is on the second floor." She took her key out of her satchel as she led them inside and they ascended the stairs, letting Nanny's incessant complaints fill the air so that she wouldn't have to.

"My word, they couldn't have given you a room on the ground level? Of course not. That would be far too convenient for poor old Nanny. Instead, we ought to torture her in the best way we know how. Oh, dear, is there many more?"

In spite of herself, Elphaba couldn't help a small smile at the familiarity of it. She had taken to guiding Nessa up so that Nanny could focus on simply getting herself up. For her part, Nessa didn't complain.

Upon reaching the second floor, Elphaba led the way to Room 22, unlocking it. She didn't realize she had been holding her breath until she swung the door open and found air exhale from deep within her lungs.

Galinda wasn't there. Her side of the room looked completely the same, and her vanity was definitely used that morning, but she wasn't there. Gratefulness swept through Elphaba, but she was sure not to show it as she crossed over to her own bed and tossed her satchel onto it. She opened the satchel, then, and took out the books inside – mostly textbooks, as she had been studying all morning before their arrival – and placed them on her shelf. She had worked up nothing short of a collection by now, she was proud to observe.

"Well, isn't this just a lovely little home?" Nanny smiled as she looked around, one hand on Nessa's back and the other on her own hip.

Elphaba finally looked back to her sister, who was scanning the room and trying not to smirk. "Pink, Fabala?" her voice was much softer than before, but filled with amusement still.

Rolling her eyes, Elphaba gave a shrug. "I did mention she was _Miss Galinda Arduenna of the Upper Uplands of Frottica_ , didn't I?" she mimicked the higher pitch of Galinda's voice. "Were you expecting anything else?"

"I suppose not," Nessa's lips pressed together, but there was an undoubtable twinkle in her eye. "You've got more books."

"Yes. Textbooks, mostly. Oz, they're pretty great, though."

"Elphaba," Nessa raised an eyebrow in the signature Thropp move. "It's fine to love learning, but now you're just a tad bit creepy about it."

Scoffing, Elphaba feigned annoyance, but she couldn't help a small grin. "Far better friends than anyone else in this school," she said before she could think better of it.

Nessa's gaze hardened a little. "Perhaps the reasons why you have no others," she said sharply.

Nanny shifted uncomfortably. "My, what a pretty view you have from the window, Fabala," she tried to change the subject, but it fell on deaf ears.

"You promised you'd try."

Elphaba winced at the hurt tone in Nessa's voice. "I _am_ ," she protested. "It's not the easiest thing when you're a green monster, though," she forced an encouraging smile.

Exhaling, Nessa just shook her head, unconvinced. Luckily, she changed the subject rather than press it. "It's warm and stuffy in here. I want to leave."

"Oh! Maybe we could go to that little café we saw downtown, Nessie," Nanny interjected cheerfully. "Yes, what _was_ its name?"

Nessa's gaze didn't leave Elphaba, even as Nanny began guiding her back towards the door. "Flickering Light Café _,"_ she recited.

Without protest, Elphaba followed behind them, keeping her palms flat against the skirt of her frock. She had never actually spent time out in Shiz besides going to the post office or out to a thrift store for her work clothing and her Ozforsaken boots. She wasn't ready to be cornered by Nessa again, so she kept a pace or two ahead of them as they journeyed towards their destination. Nanny's incessant rambling certainly helped, too.

Nessa was special. She was the first person who had ever accepted Elphaba, and she had seemingly made it her life goal to keep the green girl as acclimated to society and normal as she could. That determination, that perseverance, was something that Elphaba didn't – couldn't – understand. Why Nessa was so bent on helping her. Whether or not she even needed help. Sometimes, it truly felt like she was fine, and other times, she felt like a… a wickless candle.

The thought might as well have burned her. If Nanny or Nessa had noticed anything, though, they didn't mention it, which Elphaba took as something of a blessing. She quickly turned her thoughts back to Nessa. She certainly cared about the armless girl, and she was perhaps the most stubborn person that Elphaba had ever met, but she couldn't help wondering if what she felt for her sister (if she was called thus) was love. Was family, then, another societal language?

She swallowed hard, and then again, trying so hard to wrap her head around it. Around languages, around love, around society, around everything. And then… And then there was Nessa clearing her throat behind her, and Elphaba felt a little guilty.

She slowed a bit, falling in step on Nessa's free side. "How have you been, my pretty?" she asked gently before even thinking about it.

Nessa sent her an odd glance, but she relaxed a little bit, moving some so that her shoulder lightly brushed her sister. "I have been well. Worried sick about you, of course, but well besides," she flashed a quick smile. "Shell asks about you. He's grown fond of you, in his nonchalant ten year-old way."

Elphaba laughed a little. "Should I be flattered?"

"I would be. The cretin doesn't often ask about people. There was this minister we knew in Munchkinland, who Shell met in Quadling Country – Bfee was his name. Father and I are still in touch with him, but if you ask Shell, he wouldn't even know the name. 'Bfee who?' Honestly," she shook her head disapprovingly.

"Perhaps it's because I'm so obviously grotesque – I pique his prepubescent interest."

Elphaba was smirking, but Nessa seemed more put off by the words than anything else. "You're not a monster, Fabala. I know Father is still confused, but no monster could be as humane as you are. It's simply not possible."

Rather than respond, because she simply didn't know how, Elphaba let the conversation drop. That was all very well, it seemed, for Nessa had another avenue of pestering that she wanted to pursue.

"Have you gone to church at all since you've been here?"

Elphaba wanted to groan. This conversation was really no better. She had to resist the urge to roll her eyes. They've discussed this before. Oz, she lived a full year with Nessa – how could they not? It had never ended on a particularly good note, however, and Elphaba wondered why Nessa would be bringing it up so early. They had just gotten here. Why immediately break out the arguments and rowing?

She hated them. She hated having to argue, having to feel as if she was constantly defending herself. It was similar, in some ways, to the way in which she would bicker with Miss Galinda, and in other ways, not at all. Her rows with Galinda were meaningless. They were a way to engage, a way to blow off steam. The arguments with Nessa were… personal. Deep. Crushing.

With a twinge of regret, she remembered that not all of her fights with Galinda were so meaningless. The blonde just happened to be very good at knowing exactly where to strike to earn a reaction. It was silly, but at times, Elphaba felt that Galinda knew her better than she knew herself.

Nessa's question did not go forgotten, and after a few more steps, Elphaba knew that her sister deserved an answer. She sighed. "I have not."

For a few minutes, Nessa didn't respond, and Elphaba began to hope that perhaps she simply wouldn't respond at all. However, Nessa was never one to disappoint, and while her response was a bit belated, it did not fail to appear.

"If you want the Unnamed God to accept you, Fabala, then you must first accept Him. He creates us in His image, and it's our responsibility to devote our time and our prayers to Him, to thank him for everything He's done for us-"

"Nessa," Elphaba interrupted. She stopped walking, and they did, too, allowing Elphaba to face them and gesture half-heartedly towards herself. "Do you truly believe that _I_ was made in the Unnamed God's image? Green, spiteful, and allergic to one of the most common elements out there?"

Nessa was quiet for a minute, her head tilting downwards. "You could be," she said quietly. "If the Unnamed God gave you a soul, then why shouldn't you be?"

"I haven't a soul, Nessa, I have a life, lest you get the two confused."

"Bullshit," Nessa shot, her eyes narrowed a little.

"Language," Nanny chimed in uneasily.

"One cannot exist without the other. Since you are, indeed, alive, then you surely must have a soul, something that only the Unnamed God can give."

Elphaba just shook her head. "The Unnamed God didn't make me, Nessa. _Frex_ did, and I assure you, he is no God of yours, named or otherwise." With that, she started walking again, and she silently thanked Lurline when Nessa let the subject drop for now.

They finally reached the café, and Elphaba realized that she had seen it before – the orange and red paint on the outside of the building was hard to miss. She had only seen it in passing, though, while she was going to the thrift store, and had never paid it much mind. Now, though, as they approached it, she could see that it was kind of charming, in its own way. Quaint, and small, but it stood its own ground, sticking out against the plain tan and white buildings on its sides. She knew, immediately, that it would be locally-owned.

A bell atop the door jingled happily as they opened it and stepped through, blissfully unaware of the tension between the pseudo-family below. Elphaba almost scowled at it, before she realized that that was ridiculous. It was just a bell. It wasn't the Unnamed God, or any other offensive being. Just a bell, doing its job.

There was a woman at the front counter who opened her mouth to greet them, but upon seeing the eclectic trio, she balked, her eyes widening a little. Nanny continued propelling them forward without any hesitation, and the woman quickly shook herself, plastering a smile upon her face as they approached.

"Hi! Welcome to the Flickering Light Café! What can I get for you all today?"

It was rehearsed – that much was obvious, but it didn't bother them. Nessa was the first to speak up. "Hot cocoa." The woman glanced down towards her shoulders, noting the lack of arms, but didn't say anything, merely turning her attention back to the order ticket.

Nanny ordered some elaborate, too-sweet coffee, and Elphaba settled for just a glass of milk, unsure of whether or not coffee would burn her and not eager to find out at the time. The woman gave the total, and Nanny handed over some bills from the little bag she carried on her shoulder. "Keep the change, dear."

One glance at Nessa told Elphaba that she was aware of how the woman had looked at them, and how Nanny perhaps shouldn't have tipped her, but neither of them said anything, and Nanny was obtusely cheerful as ever.

"What a lovely little place, don't you think, Nessie? What an absolutely lovely little shop. Fabala, have you been here before? After a month here in Shiz, I can't imagine you'd have missed such a gem."

"I haven't been out much," Elphaba answered half-heartedly as they stood aside and waited for their drinks to be made.

Nanny tutted lightly. "What a shame. If Nanny lived here, she wouldn't be able to stay away," she chortled. After only a bit more rambling from her, their drinks were presented to them, likely a result of the staff not wanting to listen to her much longer. "Oh, already? What wonderful service!"

Elphaba grabbed her own glass while Nanny took the two mugs for herself and Nessa. There were a few patrons in the store, including one semi-loud group sitting at a large table in the corner, but besides that, it was mostly empty. They were heading towards a four-seater table when a voice suddenly rang out from the group of boys at the larger table.

"Miss Elphie?"

It was said with a twinge of disbelief, and instantly, Elphaba halted, turning her head towards the source. Master Boq. Master Boq was part of the larger group, which, in closer observation, was only four boys in total. He was sitting beside a taller, Gillikinese boy that Elphaba knew to be Master Avaric from the unpleasant meeting outside the Three Queens dormitory. On the other side, however, were two more that she hadn't ever met or seen before. At Boq's call, though, they turned to look at Elphaba, and grinned, almost knowingly.

"Oh, Fabala, are these friends of yours?" Nanny crowed happily, immediately hobbling over towards their table.

Nessa, however, caught Elphaba's eye. _Elphie?_ she mouthed, but all Elphaba could do was shrug unhelpfully. She remembered asking Boq before why he referred to her as such, but she couldn't ever recall receiving an answer.

With Elphaba's hand on her sister's back, she realized that there was likely no way out of this, and so she propelled them forwards, towards the table with the boys, which had fallen oddly silent.

"Hello, Master Boq," she said evenly.

Boq glanced at Nessa, and recognition flickered across his face. "Miss Nessarose," he breathed. "You're Frexspar's daughter, right? Frexspar the Godly? Do you remember me? My father was Bfee – he worked with your father. We came to Quadling Country once, to bring you all back to Munchkinland."

Nessa's eyes narrowed a little. "Yes… Yes, I remember you, Master Boq." She tilted her head towards him. "A pleasure." By the tone of her voice, it wasn't, but if Boq caught on, he didn't say anything.

Part of Elphaba urged her to excuse them and guide her companions outside, away from the bunch. She didn't want anyone to be offended by Nessa's blunt nature. Especially if Master Boq could possibly be the beginning of a friend – if she could ever attain such a thing – she didn't quite want both of her worlds to meet. Not yet.

However… She had to remind herself, Boq and Nessa had already met. It was odd, and she had absolutely no memory of it personally, but he definitely recognized her, and she recognized him, and… That had to mean they knew each other. She shifted uncomfortably. She wouldn't ever want Nessa to be possibly subjected to the cruelty that Master Avaric had shown her, but Nanny was already sitting down on an end, beside the two boys that Elphaba didn't know.

Submitting to the forces, Elphaba guided Nessa toward the table and sat her on the end of the table, Elphaba taking the seat next to Boq, so Nessa was safely secured between her and Nanny.

Boq moved a little, giving her room, and the table was quiet for a minute. Only a minute, though, before the two unnamed people decided that the silence was deafening and they ought to crack it.

The taller one, a handsome boy with ash blond hair, held his hand out towards Elphaba. "I don't believe we've met. I'm Crope, and this here is Tibbett," he gestured to the freckled redheaded boy beside him.

"Elphaba," she said slowly, carefully taking his hand and giving it a small shake. He took Nanny's hand and then bowed his head a little in greeting at Nessa.

Avaric was staring at Nessa, but didn't look particularly mean about it, just… amused. There was a lazy smile on his face, and one glance toward him made Boq even redder in the face than he had been before. Still, it annoyed Elphaba that he would stare at her sister at all.

"Miss Elphaba," Avaric said, turning towards her instead. "I was thinking about what you said to me. That you're part elf. A jest, I thought, at the time, but I was wondering if you were being truthful. It's right there in your name."

She rolled her eyes. "If I truly were part elf, Master Avaric, then my bones would be so very brittle. What an interesting theory, though. I think you ought to test it." She offered her arm to him, across Boq and the table. "Go on, snap my arm, and we'll see if your hypothesis is correct."

Avaric recoiled at the thought of touching her, and Elphaba felt a kick under the table. She withdrew her arm and glared at Nessa, who only gave her a warning look. _Remember what I told you_.

Elphaba had to hold in a sigh. She knew. Pretend to be a person and they'll treat her like one. But… Oz, it was hard when all she ever faced was ridicule. She wanted to be able to defend herself, to fight back, more than Nessa would let her, but she also knew that making an enemy of the entirety of Oz wouldn't help her fit in with society. She just had to wait before she was a part of Oz before she did that.

"So, Miss Elphaba," Tibbett spoke up. "How did you and Boq meet?"

She glanced towards the Munchkin in question, but he didn't meet her gaze, merely staring down into his mug. "He disturbed me in the library."

"Twice."

With a small scoff, she nodded at Boq's addition. "Twice. How proudly he proclaims it, too."

"Yawn," Avaric rolled his eyes, but they ignored it.

"'Disturb' she says, as if she doesn't spend all day, every day reading."

Elphaba narrowed her eyes a little at Nessa's taunting. "There is merit to reading," she argued. "If there's a topic out there in the world, then it's guaranteed that _someone_ has written about it. Books contain every language; every little detail about the world is somewhere in them. You can't fault me for my adoration of it."

"Lurline, Miss Elphie, I thought I liked to read," Boq teased lightly.

"Why do you call me that?" she asked once again. He didn't respond, only colored red again and looked away.

Luckily for him, he didn't have to, because Nessa took that opportunity to change the subject. "I don't suppose any of you know Miss Galinda Arduenna?" she asked the boys, and Elphaba sent her an irritated look.

Nessa was smart. She had to give her that. Knowing that Elphaba wouldn't speak of her roommate, she found ways around it. Elphaba couldn't help but admire her determination, and her creativity, just a bit, in spite of her annoyance. Nessa met her eyes, briefly, and Elphaba could have sworn she was triumph in those dark eyes.

"Do we ever?" Avaric cried, clapping a hand on Boq's back. "Boqy here has been in love with her since the moment he set eyes on her!"

"Have not!" Boq protested, and then winced when Avaric tousled his hair. His hands immediately went up to fix it and he scowled at his roommate. "I just think she's nice, is all…"

"Have you even met her?" Crope asked in amusement, laughing when Boq only blushed more.

Boq crossed his arms over his chest indignantly. "And this is why I never go anywhere public with you buffoons…" he muttered.

"Aww, come on, you know you love us," Tibbett grinned, and Boq couldn't argue the point.

Nessa was undeterred by their banter. She pressed on. "Have any of you met her?" she repeated. Elphaba was about to tell her to leave it well enough alone when Tibbett responded.

"As if Miss Galinda Arduenna would ever be seen with the likes of us," he rolled his eyes. "Well, maybe Avaric. Avaric's kind of in that gray area."

"I'm just special that way," Avaric nodded with a cocky smirk.

Nanny seemed to be thinking about something, and sipped her coffee carefully before saying anything. "Are you the Margreave's son? The Margreave Tenmeadows? Nanny thought he had a son named Avatic or Avaric or something of that sort."

Something flickered across Avaric's eyes, and his jaw visibly tightened. "That's me. How do you know dear old Dad, then, Miss…?"

"Nanny – just Nanny," she waved her and dismissively. "And I don't. I just know of him. A horrible, rough man, Nanny heard."

He swallowed. "Yes, I suppose."

The conversation ended there, an awkward silence hanging over the group. For a moment, Elphaba thought it would never end, and she wondered if perhaps the silence was better than conversation with this group anyway. She tried to ignore their presence and simply drank her milk.

"This has been lovely, but we should really get back to Crage Hall," Nessa said after a couple more minutes of silence, pushing her chair back and standing up, wobbling only a little. Quickly, Elphaba stood beside her and held out a hand to steady her.

"Oh, alright," Nanny grumbled, standing as well and placing a gentle hand on Nessa's back, guiding her out towards the front of the café.

Elphaba lingered a little, meeting Boq's eyes. "My sister," she explained quickly. "Er. Step-cousin, twice removed – I am, not her – but… You get the picture."

He flashed her an apologetic smile, and she took that as permission to go. Part of her almost didn't want to leave him with the boys that had taunted him extensively during the conversation, but the other part wanted to be as far from the lot as possible, and with Boq's permission, and Nessa and Nanny already out the door, she had no clear alternative.

So, without saying anything to Avaric, Crope, or Tibbett, she wiggled her fingers in something of a wave and followed her sister out into the windy outside.

Nessa shot her an odd look, and she raised an eyebrow questioningly, but the armless girl didn't say anything, only shrugged her shoulders and looked back out at Shiz.

"Did you want to go anywhere else?" Elphaba questioned, already tired of being out but not wanting to disrupt their plans. After all, it was their first time in Shiz, and the city itself was somewhat historic. Nessa didn't really strike her as the tourist type, but Nanny on the other hand…

"I'd like to go to the unionist chapel here – it's one of the oldest in Oz, you know," Nessa said. "Not today, though. I'm afraid that conversation was quite enough excitement for now. I was thinking we should perhaps head back to your room, and you can tell me all about your classes."

Despite not having thought of it at first, Elphaba was not at all surprised about the request to see the unionist chapel, _especially_ since tomorrow was Sunday. She had no doubt that Nessa would drag her there. She had to hold in a groan at the thought – she was not devoted to any God. This was likely all planned, she thought glumly as she walked back towards campus with them. Nessa would've specifically chosen to visit on a weekend, knowing that Elphaba wouldn't have gone to church at all in her month at Shiz.

Nanny was rattling on about how beautiful the city was again, talking about buildings she saw, store names, trees and squirrels and rabbits and flowers, anything she could see. If she saw it, Elphaba thought, then she had something to say about it. It was amusing, and endearing, in a way. She certainly enjoyed the silence.

At some point, she had taken over Nanny's job of guiding Nessa so that the older woman could go and window shop some more, but it was nice, being able to walk in silence with her sister, one hand resting gently on her lower back, helping her balance.

Nessa even stepped closer through the walk, her head resting against Elphaba at one point. The touch was uncomfortable and somewhat unwelcome, and she felt bad for thinking so.

Touch was one thing that she hadn't quite gotten used to in her feeble three years of life. It was usually fine and well when it was something that she had instigated, because in that way, she was in control of it. She had expected it. Touching was different than being touched, and while normally, she would have enjoyed the feeling of Nessa against her, it had been unexpected, and it really just made her feel vulnerable more than anything else.

Once again, she cursed her situation. How she had grown up. How she had been treated. How she had been made. That's what it all boiled down to, isn't it? She was treated the way she was because of how she was made – even if most of Oz didn't know, they _did_ know that she was green, which was a direct result – and her childhood, if it could be called such – maybe her 'life' would be more fitting – was because of how she was treated.

She didn't know people. She didn't know society, and by Oz, she didn't know any of its languages. And she knew that it was all because of Frex. Almost instantly, she felt something in her change, some sort of flame ignite itself in her chest, and she suddenly couldn't keep her mouth shut anymore.

"You said that Frexspar went to the Glikkus?" she asked, her voice light in spite of the fire within her. Nessa pulled away and turned to cast her an uneasy glance, but didn't move from Elphaba's hand.

Her question had effectively silenced Nanny, too, who looked at her with something resembling pity on her face, a look that Elphaba detested fully.

"Yes," Nessa answered slowly. "Eastern Glikkus. A chapel there reached out to him and asked him to speak to its masses. He took Shell with him."

Elphaba stared down at the ground now. "He didn't take you, my pretty?"

"I didn't want to go."

That was a lie, and Elphaba knew it. She also knew why Nessa didn't go, and it wholly had to do with her earlier suspicions about the armless girl wanting to visit Shiz over a weekend. This being the first weekend Frex would have been gone… Elphaba knew exactly why Nessa hadn't gone, and it irritated her, not that she'd say anything about it to her.

"It must be cold up there," she murmured instead. "History books I've read have claimed that Eastern Glikkus is the coldest place in all of Oz, regularly going below freezing in the autumn and winter. If it's windy here, I can only imagine how it must be up there."

Nessa was giving her that look again, that look that said she saw right through her and disapproved. It was a familiar expression on her face. "We made sure they were well-prepared for the cold. Shell was wearing two jackets when they left Nest Hardings."

"…And Frex?"

"Only one, though he had more packed, as well as gloves and hats, on the off chance it snowed. The Glikkus isn't supposed to snow so early in the year, but it's happened before."

"So, he's gone off to preach to the dwarves," Elphaba remarked with her lips quirked upwards in a small smirk.

Nessa scowled at the implications. "Father does important work, Fabala. Don't forget that. He's saved countless souls in his travels and missions."

"Yeah? And how many has he ruined?"

Elphaba knew the answer before she asked it. _Just one_. But luckily, Nessa didn't say anything, only lifted her chin and began to walk more briskly at risk of losing her balance and falling if Elphaba didn't speed up with her. Of course, though, she could never let that happen, so she picked up the pace, as well, hearing Nanny's complaints a full minute before they even came.

Nothing else was said during the walk back to Crage Hall, aside from the occasional comment of Nanny's. She was quieter during the ascent to the second floor, though, surprising both of the Thropps present.

With the tension of the day hanging over them almost like a cloud, Elphaba hadn't even considered the possibility that, when she returned to her room, a certain blonde Frottican would be inside, sitting at her vanity and touching up her makeup.

When they entered, Galinda turned to face them, and immediately froze. Recognition played across her face, then something almost resembling guilt as she looked towards Elphaba and saw the clear annoyance there. The younger girl she was with seemed almost triumphant, though, and the older woman pleased.

For her part, Galinda hadn't been intending to disrupt Elphaba's day with her family. In fact, she had even made plans with her friends earlier in the week so as to be out of the room, like she had been prompted to do. This morning, she had remembered, and had left early, just in case the carriage came early, and had not had plans to be back in the room until after dusk.

But now, it was late in the afternoon, and she had been in the room for half an hour, all thoughts of Elphaba's sister having flown from her mind. Her day with Pfannee and Shenshen and Milla had been cut short when they'd started discussing their parents, and Galinda simply couldn't handle it at the time. She'd complained of a headache and went back to Crage Hall as quickly as her small feet would take her.

"Hello," she said once she had recovered, smiling politely.

The newer Thropp – Nessa, she remembered – also smiled, but Elphaba mostly seemed aggravated still. "Miss Galinda, I presume?" the girl asked. She was quite slim, her arms invisible – likely held behind her back, Galinda figured.

Part of Galinda reminded her that Elphaba had called her sister disfigured. The girl didn't really look such, though, she thought as she stood to properly greet her. "Yes – did Miss Elphaba talk about me?" she shot a curious glance towards the green girl.

"Not at all," Nessa responded before Elphaba had a chance. "My name is Nessa," she tilted her head forward.

"A pleasure to meet you," Galinda stuck out her hand in greeting. However, in the corner of her eye, she could see Elphaba shaking her head quickly, and Nessa simply stared down at the proffered hand with disdain, and that's when it clicked.

Nessa wasn't just slim. It was hard to see, with the way that the pretty gold shawl fell over her shoulders, but once one looked closer, it became quite, blaringly apparent. The girl had no arms. She wasn't just slim. Her hands weren't clasped behind her back, because she didn't have any. Galinda also noticed the way that Elphaba had a hand gently pressed to her lower back, as if supporting her.

"I'm so sorry," Galinda said, letting her hand dropped, but Nessa didn't acknowledge that, simply looking around the room a little more.

"You are from Frottica, Miss Galinda?"

"Y-yes…" she answered, still trying to recover from her thoughtless blunder. "I'm… I'm actually the first Frottican to attend Shiz University."

The older woman began muttering something to Elphaba, but the green girl seemed not to be paying attention, instead giving Galinda a rather curious look.

"Sounds lovely," Nessa commented, though her voice lacked any sort of emotion. "How have you been getting on with my sister, may I ask?"

Galinda met Elphaba's gaze. There was something unreadable in her expression, though the clenching of her free hand down by her side did not go unnoticed. Galinda wasn't sure how to respond, and Elphaba was no help, so she decided instead to simply play it safe. "I don't really see her that often," she answered. "She's always in the library. Comes in here to sleep, but besides that…"

Nessa seemed less than pleased with the answer. "She doesn't bother you terribly, does she?"

"Not at all," Galinda lied. She thought she saw a flicker of something pass over Elphaba's face, almost like a smile, but it was gone before she could make sense of it.

"You're kind," Elphaba interjected in a droll tone, provoking a small grin to pass over Nessa's features before it left just as quickly as Elphaba's had.

Galinda rolled her eyes, but couldn't help her own grin. "Certainly not something I learned from exposure to you, Miss Elphaba," she teased before it occurred to her that perhaps she shouldn't be talking to the ugly green thing in such a playful way. She deigned to ignore that thought for now.

"Because you see her so little," Nessa interjected helpfully, though her voice was quiet.

"Precisely," Elphaba smirked.

Nanny nudged Elphaba aside and took her place, supporting Nessa with a firm hand. "It was a long carriage ride, and I'm sure Nessie here is tired. We should check into our hotel, we should. Fabala? Shall we meet for dinner later?"

Elphaba nodded mutely. Nessa tried to protest, but Nanny steered her out of the room and back down the stairs, hushing her gently.

The silence thereafter seemed to stretch forever, as Galinda and Elphaba were left in the room alone. Both of them were secretly glad that the others had left, most of the tension in the room leaving with them. That is, until the entirely new batch of tension settled in.

Swallowing hard, Elphaba moved to her bed, and Galinda watched her intently while moving to her own.

"She's… pleasant," she offered.

Elphaba just snorted and grinned at her. "She's an impossible pain in the rear. Pious, proud, and pretentious, but certainly not pleasant."

"Sounds like someone I know," Galinda said pointedly. "Besides the pious part – I don't think I've ever heard you even mention a God, named or otherwise."

"For good reason," Elphaba responded, a bit more relaxed now. "Gods don't exist where I'm from."

The sentence was vague, but it sparked something in Galinda, reminding her of the realization she had had last night, after she and Elphaba had wished each other fresh dreams and fallen into a quiet agreement.

"…I thought you were from Ev…"

Elphaba swallowed hard. "I am. I-I came across the border just over a year ago."

The stutter did not go unnoticed, but it did go unaddressed. "You've only been in Oz for a year?"

"Yes."

"And yet, you know Qua'ati, having, as you claimed, spent most of your life in Quadling Country. It's why your feet are so badly burned that you can't even feel them anymore."

She knew she was treading in dangerous territory, calling her out, but Elphaba only looked trapped, her eyes wide and unfocused and her head tilted down.

Elphaba cursed herself and her stupid loud mouth. How had she forgotten? How had she completely forgotten her fake backstory enough to tell Galinda the truth? Her breathing quickened, and she desperately looked around for some sort of escape.

"I… I lied."

Frowning, Galinda couldn't hold back from pushing it. "You lied about knowing Qua'ati, or you lied about being from Ev?" She didn't get a response. "Elphaba, really. I don't believe you're from Ev. Not with the way you and her acted so alike – she could practically be your twin, besides the respective green and disfigurement."

Relief flooded through Elphaba. She could work with this. Her lie was becoming more intricate, but she could definitely work with it. She met Galinda's gaze again and offered her a small, almost shy smile. "I haven't ever seen Ev in my life," she confessed.

In spite of herself, Galinda smiled back. "I figured. Why carry around the story, then?"

Elphaba sighed and looked down to the ground. "My father," she revealed. "Frexspar Thropp? He didn't want to claim me. Who would? He made the elaborate story to cover up the fact that I was his creation."

Galinda shook her head a little bit in disbelief. "And your skin…? If it's not from the waste at the border then why is it…?"

A shrug. "I was made like this. I've lived my whole life green. I haven't a clue as to why. It's not contagious, you know."

"Considering Nessa wasn't green, I'd gathered that much by myself, believe it or not."

With a grin, Elphaba tilted her head toward her roommate. "Careful, Blondie. You're sounding more and more like a Thropp every day," she warned.

"Oh, hush," Galinda rolled her eyes, though she felt her cheeks get warm. "Even if your verdigris isn't contagious, your Throppishness must be."

"Throppishness?" Elphaba repeated, and then burst into that horrid cackling, causing Galinda's face to heat up anymore. "I like that word," she said once she had calmed down, smiling at her roommate.

Once again, Galinda couldn't help but return it. Elphaba's smiles – her genuine ones – were so rare, that she felt almost proud that she had caused it. She sighed and shook her head, leaning back on her bed and gazing at her roommate.

"You're an enigma, Miss Elphaba, truly."

 **A/N: A bit of a lighter chapter, in comparison to some of the others. I hope you guys liked it! Please remember to leave a review below. As I always say, reviews keep a writer writing!**


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N: Sorry again for the delay, everyone - midterms hit me hard, and I've spent some time actually hashing out some of the plot in the future of this story to have some direction. I also have chapter eleven completely written, despite being not-there-yet, and let me tell you, it's a _beast_. Like, over a thousand words longer than any of the others so far.**

 **As always, many thanks to my absolutely lovely reviewers, and I'd love to hear more feedback regarding my weird little fic. I'm gonna be working to get chapters up faster, so thanks everyone for sticking around this long!**

 **Also, mild TW for abuse.**

The night had been a quiet one. At dinner, Nessa and Elphaba had managed to avoid the really touchy subjects that they so often argued over. They had gone to a small diner where the pasta was less than phenomenal, but the soup was decent. When she returned to the room, Elphaba found that Galinda was already in bed, having retired far earlier than usual. She sat at her desk for an hour and worked on her homework before resigning as well.

She hadn't forgotten Nessa's request when the morning came, the desire to see the chapel. The still-running historic chapel. Little wonder, that. Part of her hoped that Nessa had forgotten it, but she knew that she wouldn't have. Not something so important to her.

Galinda had awoken early, readied herself for the day, and left without so much as a word in Elphaba's direction. Besides the chapel, Nanny and Nessa had not planned much that day, and Elphaba hoped that this time, Galinda would stay out with her friends. Perhaps she'd finally find a husband, she mused. After all, the way that Galinda talked about it, it might as well be so simple a task. She remembered what Galinda had told her – she wanted a _loaded_ husband, not just rich – and wondered why the distinction was so important to the blonde.

Elphaba took her time getting ready that morning, dreading the moment she'd hear Nanny's knock, announcing their arrival. She adored her sister, but there were some things that Nessa just didn't understand – things, she found, that no one could understand. Things that _she_ barely understood. That might as well be part of the reason why no one else could get it, if she couldn't.

Just like with her identity.

She sighed in frustration as she brushed oil through her hair with her fingers. The strands weren't tangled – they never tangled – but the shampooing oil helped keep them clean, at least, and nicely-smelling. She paused, looking at herself in the mirror. More often than not, she ignored mirrors, not wanting to face her own reflection.

Now, as she finally faced herself, she felt any sort of confidence she had deflate even more. A person's skin color was such a trivial thing, she thought. It shouldn't cause such a blemish on their appearance. She leaned forward, staring at her cheeks. Her skin was smooth, no acne or patches. It was simply the hue that was different than a normal person's. Why should that cause so much stigma?

Swallowing hard, she pulled back, ducking her head to once again avoid the looking glass and finished up with her hair. Once she was done, she left the washroom and jack-knifed herself on her bed again, pulling out the nearest textbook she could find and trying to distract herself with it.

That was the thing about textbooks. They were so sure. They knew what they were, and they didn't kid themselves into being anything more. They simply gave information – more often than not, true information – and simply tried to share the learning with everyone else.

Books gave what they knew, and they were never unsure. The authors were never unsure. That confidence was something that she wished she had.

She flinched as the dreaded knock finally came. She glared at the door pathetically for a minute, not quite willing to face the coming, inevitable argument. She wouldn't go to church. She wouldn't worship a fake God who had given her nothing. She still had some dignity left, enough to not beg on her knees for some sort of forgiveness when she had done nothing – she had not been the one to defy Him. She had never defied Him. Why should she be punished for it?

If there was a God out there, she would have been shown some acknowledgment by Him. Some proof that He was real. But she was as alone in the world as she had always been, ignored by the very deity that everyone else worshipped so dutifully.

Unwillingly, she stood and crossed over to the door, opening it. Standing outside, as she expected, was Nanny and Nessa, the former wearing a bright smile. "Morning, Fabala!" she chirped happily as she guided Nessa into the room.

Nessa looked over Elphaba's attire disapprovingly. "That's what you're wearing to church?"

No pretenses now, Elphaba thought, holding back a roll of her eyes. Still, she glanced down at her simple gray frock and tried her best to delay the argument. "What's wrong with my clothing? It's you and Nanny who bought it."

"Ha! You wouldn't take anything else," Nanny pointed out. "Poor Nessie and Nanny tried to get you better clothing, but you wanted none of it."

"Where are your work clothes?" Nessa asked. "You said those are nicer, right?"

"Nothing more than blouses and skirts, Nessa. Besides, those are meant for work, not for…"

She stopped when Nessa raised an eyebrow, almost threateningly. She knew that if she finished that sentence, it would not have gone over well. Instead, she busied herself with cleaning up her area, putting books away on their shelves.

"You need to take this seriously, Elphaba. If you don't accept Him first, then how will He ever accept you?"

Elphaba deigned to ignore the comment. Maybe if she ignored it, it would go away. But, once again, Nessa was never one to disappoint.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you, Elphaba," her tone was sharp as she said it, and Elphaba complied, meeting her gaze with a steely resolve. "Come to church with us." Her voice softened. "The way in which you were made was wicked and unnatural, but you're still a person. You're still my sister. I don't want your soul to be destroyed. Why can't you… Why can't you just understand that He is keeping you alive, and He deserves your thanks, your praise?"

Elphaba worked her jaw, feeling anger bubble up in her stomach. She exhaled deeply, staring levelly into Nessa's eyes. "Soul implies Life, Nessie, but I have only life. That is all I was given. Unless you think Frexspar was holy enough to call down a soul from wherever the Unnamed God keeps them and bestow it unto my Lifeless body?"

"Father did not give you your soul, the Unnamed God did. Father is a wonderful, devoted man and I love him dearly, but he is foolish. I don't believe that he would have been able to create you without a rather spectacular degree of help – help that could only be given by He who regularly creates."

It was becoming somewhat difficult to breathe, and Elphaba found herself becoming nothing short of enraged at the assumptions Nessa made. She clenched her hands into fists at her sides and tried to control her breathing. It made no sense. Nothing Nessa was saying was making any sense, and in spite of all of her confusion about identity, Elphaba knew that it was _wrong_. She didn't know what she was, but she did know one thing that she wasn't.

"Why would your precious God support such an unholy and unnatural creature as me?"

The words were out in the open before she even considered what to say, and they caused no short amount of anger in the room. Nessa tensed, her shoulders high and distress evident on her face. Nanny looked as if she wanted to say something, but she held back uncertainly, looking between the two girls.

"Elphaba, He didn't mean to take you," was Nessa's quiet reply. "If He had meant to take you, then He wouldn't have given you back. Why else would you age as if you had never been taken? Why else would you function like a person when your body was crafted by a layman in the matter? Your soul was ready. It just wasn't in use."

As she realized her sister's meaning, Elphaba felt her blood run cold. She could distinctly hear her heart pounding in her chest. Nessa didn't know what she was. No one did.

"Is that why you gave me that wretched title, then?" she hissed. Nessa shifted uncomfortably, and Elphaba realized with a sense of triumph that she had struck a nerve.

Swallowing hard, Elphaba felt the fire, all of the anger she felt at Frexspar, slowly blaze through her, and her next words were so contrastingly icy that she almost felt them burn her throat as she said them, staring straight into Nessa's eyes.

" _I am not that child that died in the womb._ "

She could see the hurt on Nessa's face, replicated almost exactly on Nanny's. It felt as if Room 22 was holding its breath, waiting for someone to crack, for someone to break down and apologize. It was Nessa that spoke next, but her voice was so heartbreakingly feeble that she might as well not have.

"…You should have been."

With that hanging in the air between them, Nessa turned towards Nanny and gave her a pleading look. Nothing else was said in Room 22 as Nanny steered Nessa back around towards the door and took her the boarding station, where they found the next carriage to Nest Hardings and embarked.

 **XXX**

He didn't know what to think as he stared down at the letter. His knuckles were white with how hard he gripped it, and he couldn't help but feel as if something of his had been horribly violated.

His father was a coward. It didn't take an extensive acquaintance with the man to know that. What was most annoying, perhaps, was the fact that the man would rather hide and tell him over a letter than actually talk to him about what he did. With a groan, he let the letter fall back down to his desk, leaning his head on his hands.

"That didn't sound like a happy groan," Avaric commented helpfully from the other side of the room, where he was bouncing a rubber ball against the wall next to his bed.

Boq shot him a look. "Do those exist?"

Avaric grinned naughtily. "If you ask that girl I was with a couple nights ago-"

"Avaric? Shut up."

The taller boy laughed, but then sat up and swung his long legs off of the bed. "Really, though, Boq. What's the matter?" He stood and approached, noticing the letter on the desk. "Ooh, a letter," he snatched the thing up from the desk.

"Hey, that's mine!" Boq cried, tearing it from Avaric's grasp. Avaric continued to frown down at the empty space between his hands, as if the letter were still there. "It's from my father."

"Having daddy issues?" Avaric teased.

Boq rolled his eyes and stuffed the letter in a drawer of his desk. "You're no stranger to those, yourself," he pointed out.

"Alright, then," Avaric narrowed his eyes dangerously. "So, what did Daddy Boq say?" When his roommate didn't respond, he let the jokes fall, his face growing a bit more serious. "C'mon, Boq. You know you can tell me anything. Do you want to talk about it?"

With a sigh, Boq shook his head, but spoke anyway. "He was here, in Shiz. Just a few days ago. He didn't tell me until now, in this letter, like a coward."

"Why wouldn't he visit?"

Boq ran a hand through his hair. "He betrayed something to a third party, something that I made him swear he'd never talk to anyone about. Now, everything could fall apart so easily. It… It's dangerous information, Avaric. I wouldn't want it in the wrong hands."

"What did you get yourself into, Boq?" Avaric muttered. "How would you have any sort of dangerous information? No offense, but you're from a poor Munchkinlander family."

"I _know_ that," Boq sighed again. "But it's not dangerous to me in particular, or even you. It's not any sort of top secret classified information – it's just… It's dangerous to her."

"Galinda?" Avaric knew the answer even before Boq shook his head. "Would you feel comfortable telling me?" Another rebuttal. Unsure of what to do with himself, Avaric just placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. "Well, if you need anything – a girl or a night out or a talk, whatever it is – you can come to me, cool?"

Boq nodded mutely before finally looking at his roommate. "Thank you, Avaric."

The taller boy flashed him a smile – not one of the cheap, smug ones he gave to hot girls, but a genuine smile. "Anytime, Boq. Don't go getting too romantic about it, though, or I might have to deck you." All in good fun, of course. "Now come on, let's go get some food. Maybe we can find the boys out and about."

 **XXX**

"So, did you get to meet her?"

No sooner had Galinda sat down at the table with Pfannee, Shenshen, and Milla on Sunday morning than Shenshen begun to pester her with questions. Of course, she knew who they were talking about. Elphaba had done a pretty good job of hiding her sister, and besides that, the girls were too revolted by the idea of another green thing around (despite Elphaba having pointed out that her sister was not green) that they hadn't gone looking.

"Yeah, you are her roomie, after all," Milla nudged her arm. "You can't tell me she didn't take her sister to your room."

"And since you had returned to it with a headache rather early, I see no reason why you _wouldn't_ have met her, if you were ill," Pfannee added.

Galinda didn't look up at any of them at first, merely offering a small shrug and taking a bite of her fruit platter. "I did meet her," she answered, but didn't say more, her friends clearly becoming distressed at the lack of information.

"Come on, Galinda, you have to tell us about it!" Pfannee whined, reaching out a hand and placing it on the Frottican's arm.

Shenshen's shoulders drooped pathetically. "Yeah! Was she awful? Was she green? What was her disfigurement?"

"Three heads? A third arm? Two mouths? Eight eyes?" Milla listed with a perverse sort of interest in the images that came to mind.

"She wasn't green," Galinda rolled her eyes. "Elphaba told you that much."

"Why do you call her that?" Shenshen asked with a face of disgust.

Feeling her cheeks warm a little, Galinda realized her blunder. She shrugged it off, though, playing it as cool as she could. "It's her name. She's my roommate, however much I may wish she wasn't. It's just easier to pretend to be civil to each other rather than waste energy fighting her."

Pfannee sighed dramatically. "You're so good. I wouldn't have the patience."

"But her sister?" Milla prompted. "What's her alleged disfigurement?"

"She has no arms."

Immediately, Pfannee recoiled in revulsion, but Milla just looked confused, and Shenshen almost pitying. "No arms? The poor thing!" Shenshen cried. "Can you imagine not having any arms, Pfannee? You wouldn't be able to do your makeup or your hair or hug or-"

"Well, I have two perfectly-functioning arms, thank you very much," Pfannee snapped back. "Besides, this is family of the greenbean we're talking about here. Don't get all sympathetic – she's probably as wicked as her sister."

"Er, step-cousin, twice removed."

They ignored Galinda's weak correction.

Pfannee eyed her carefully, though, as if debating how to word what she wanted to say. Galinda swallowed hard and took another bite of her fruit, not liking the look on her friend's face.

"Galinda," Pfannee finally said, changing the subject. "You remember that disgusting poetry thing that Madame Morrible had on Friday evening?"

Feigning disinterest, Galinda continued to pick at her food. "Yes. It was horrific – I just about fell asleep during it."

Now, they had gathered the attention of Shenshen and Milla, too, though they didn't say anything, letting Pfannee get to her point. "If I'm not mistaken, you were talking with the artichoke after the Animal one. You two almost looked like friends, huddled together and whispering."

Galinda's heart sped up, but she was nothing if not an actress, and she was able to keep her face from betraying it. She even scrunched her nose a little bit to boot. "If you remember, Pfannee, _she_ came up to _me_. I couldn't just get up and walk away – Morrible would have known. I tried to get her to leave me alone." That much wasn't a lie.

"Why did you actually talk to it, then?"

"Yeah, and why did she think you had anything to say in the first place? Oz knows all I could gather from it was _boring_."

Now Milla and Shenshen were butting in, incensed by the gossip. Galinda scoffed and gave them pointed looks. "Well, at first, again, I was trying to get her to leave me be. She always tries to analyze everything, and it's exhausting. Sometimes, I humor her, spew some ridiculous nonsense."

"But _why_? Why bother? She's not worth it."

"Because the psychobabble nonsense usually ends up occupying her for the next few days, or even weeks, if I'm lucky, and keeps her from interacting me until she runs out of stuff to think about, in which case, I am perfectly willing to provide."

Pfannee laughed rudely. "Such an odd, horrible creature! She actually likes the random crap?"

"Sometimes, I think she thrives off of it," Galinda grinned. "What else would she be reading about, night and day? Oz," she shook her head. "I can't even imagine how depressing it must be to actually _enjoy_ it all."

Milla smirked. "Just another reason why the vegetable has no friends, I suppose."

"No, no, she has friends," Shenshen interrupted, looking pensive. "Her books, right?"

There was a moment of silence, and then the table dissolved into laughter, perfectly content to simply gossip for the rest of their Ozdamned lives, Galinda thought. Such simpleminded girls couldn't possibly know anything of decent, real conversation, after all. They just weren't raised that way.

 _Neither were you_ , she had to remind herself. What did that mean, though? She carried out these conversations with Elphaba, and they weren't often completely one-sided, like she would lead her friends to believe. There were times when she had even wanted to hear what her detestable roommate would have to say… And, well, what she said in return wasn't always the nonsense that she had indicated. There was something about Elphaba, something that made her think. It was awful, and frustrating, and obnoxious, and sometimes she wished her stupid roommate simply _wouldn't_ implore her for her opinion, because she hated how different it felt to give it, unabashed, free from any masks or facades. How good it actually felt.

She broadened her smile, tilting her head to listen to what Pfannee was saying now about some boy in her calculus class. Her life was so carefully constructed, and she knew that it needed to stay that way, lest it could all shatter into a million perfect, delicate little pieces.

 **XXX**

The next morning, Elphaba ended up going to the buttery later than usual, her first class not being for another couple hours. In her defense, she was busy reading that morning, and had simply lost track of time. She took solace in the fact that Miss Galinda and her fellow ninnies would likely be in class, so she wouldn't have to deal with their ridicule, and on top of that, the confusing array of emotions that Miss Galinda could now inspire within her.

Miss Galinda was a conundrum.

There were times where Elphaba believed that the blonde would want nothing more than for her roommate to simply disappear (even though she already spent copious amounts of time in the library), and there were those contrary times where it almost seemed as if Galinda would enjoy their conversation. It would almost seem like Galinda enjoyed her company. That was silly, and immature, she chastised herself. She had thought she'd be past all of the childish inclinations and hopes that used to keep her going.

If her skin didn't scare people off, then her temperament surely did, and sometimes, she wished she actually knew how to think before she spoke, but too often, she found herself unfiltered and blunt, immediately perceiving everyone and everything as a threat and weaponizing herself and her words as best she could against them. It felt, constantly, like she was up against all of Oz, and part of her argued that it wasn't fair, but she knew that it was the way it was. She was unnatural, and different, and Oz wasn't particularly receptive to either of those things.

She thought briefly of the growing oppression of the Animals, and she felt her blood grow hot. What right did people have to hate others, soulful creatures, just because they looked a little different or spoke a little different? Animals deserved the same respect that any normal Ozian received, and so little were they actually treated as they ought to be.

Elphaba knew that she wasn't like the Animals. She wasn't like any other creature in Oz. _One of a kind_ , she thought bitterly, _in more ways than one_. No. Animals had souls. Whether or not a God, named or otherwise, existed, Animals had some sort of spirit in them, something that she was simply unable to have. Frexspar had cursed her in that way. Regardless of how she felt about her own life, one thing that she did know was that she shouldn't have been created. It was the mission of a fool, and a fool more was he for succeeding.

The dark thoughts plaguing her feeble existence were all too common. She tried to avoid them when she could; she tried to focus on everything else, on her surroundings, on her classes, on her books – anything. Her mind was overactive, though, as if trying to catch up, fifteen years behind everyone else's. Others had already thought about this sort of thing – they knew who they were, they had their identities set. She was simply thrown into a mix, and her mind seemed so desperate to analyze everything – it all just happened to be so depressing.

However, it was also comforting, in a way, she thought with no small amount of irony. Sometimes, with her thoughts to occupy and accompany her, she wouldn't feel so alone.

"Miss Elphie?"

She turned towards the voice – as so many here seemed determined to confront her – and expected to see Boq, not having registered the voice itself yet, only the words. She was surprised when, instead, she saw an ash blond boy, one of the ones she had met at the diner just last weekend. "Oz, not you, too," she muttered. She vaguely remembered him introducing himself as Crope.

He smiled almost apologetically, and for a clock tick, she believed it. "My apologies, Miss Elphaba. Boq, Tibbs, and Avaric are just over there." He hesitated. "Would you like to sit with us?"

She raised an eyebrow skeptically. "And why in Oz would I want to do that?" It came out harsher than she had meant it to, but she stood by her contempt regardless.

Crope, for his part, was mostly unfazed by her temper. "I haven't the faintest clue," he told her with a sort of knowing smile. When he turned and began heading back to the table he had indicated, she was surprised to find herself following behind, her hands tightly clutching her plate, which remained empty besides for a couple slices of coffee cake. When they reached the table, Boq seemed surprised, Tibbett delighted, and Avaric somewhere between repulsed and intrigued.

There was another man sitting at the table, one she hadn't met. From pictures, she could recognize him as a Vinkun, and briefly wondered if he was the prince that she had heard everything about from the moment his arrival was announced. He had a symmetrical face, with deep chestnut eyes and dark skin. He was tattoed with blue diamonds, expertly crafted along his face and what was visible of his chest and arms.

"Miss Elphaba," Avaric greeted her sardonically. "To what do we owe the pleasure?"

She raised her hands innocently. "Don't ask me – this was his idea," she jutted her chin towards Crope.

"Regardless," Boq interrupted, silencing Avaric with a look. "We are happy to have you, Miss Elphie." Avaric looked like he wanted to say something, but refrained. "Do you happen to know where Miss Galinda is?"

Elphaba rolled her eyes. "Likely in class, flitting about with her astoundingly annoying socialite friends. She irks me – might we discuss something else?"

"Oh, but Boqy here only has eyes and ears for one particular blondie," Tibbett teased his friend, and Boq batted him away.

"Miss Elphie, I'm just dying to ask. Your skin, what do –"

"I was made with it."

Her immediate retort cut off Crope's question and he was left trying to collect himself, perturbed by her sudden interruption. "I was going to ask," he said slowly, "what you use to moisturize it. Your skin always looks so smooth. I'm a huge lotion connoisseur and lover, but I have never seen skin as smooth as your own, green or otherwise."

Elphaba was taken aback. She narrowed her eyes at him, trying to see what he was playing at, whether he was lying or being truthful. She huffed in irritation. "Oil," she told him. "I use a couple different oils."

"Might I borrow them one day?" Crope questioned excitedly.

"I suppose…"

Tibbett just about squealed. "You'd be so radiant!"

"Oh, Miss Elphie, you haven't met Fiyero, have you?" Boq asked.

Her gaze flicked back to the Vinkun, who shrunk a little in his seat, almost shyly. "Hello," he greeted her hesitantly. "Fiyero Tigelaar," he extended a hand across the table towards her.

She took it almost cautiously, giving it a small shake before letting her hand retreat again. "Prince of a Vinkun tribe, yes?"

He smiled nervously. "In a manner of speaking, yes. We are not the royalty that one would imagine, though – the Arjiki tribe does not work that way. We have a hierarchy, as any other society does, but we truly operate within conventions and councils. The title of king, or prince, truly means very little due to how we've structured to avoid tyranny."

"Fascinating," she said drolly, but in truth, she was a bit intrigued by the type of society he had only just begun to describe.

"Isn't he dreamy?" Crope swooned, resting his head on the Vinkun's shoulder. Then, something struck him, and he sat up with a gasp. "Ooh, are your parents going to be coming for family weekend?"

Fiyero frowned. "I doubt it. When is that?"

"This weekend."

"Yeah, I don't think that would be possible," he shook his head. "My parents are awfully busy."

Elphaba shot Boq a confused look. "Family weekend?"

"It's a special weekend planned by the university that's not actually special at all. All they do is charge extra money for stuff."

Avaric grinned and leaned forward. "You had the right idea in bringing your family earlier, green bean. You and Boqypoo," he rustled the hair on top of the Munchkin's head. Boq scoffed and batted him away.

"Your dad came, Boq?" Tibbett asked. "Why didn't you tell us!?"

Boq rolled his eyes. "I didn't know." Before he let the conversation progress any further, though, he glanced around the buttery. "Oh, look – they've got a pianist setting up on the stage," he commented, gesturing towards the stage where, indeed, a middle-aged Gillikinese man was sitting down before a piano.

"So, forgive me, but is it Miss Elphie or Miss Elphaba?"

She was surprised by Fiyero's honest question, and gave him a strange look. "Elphaba. Boq, for some reason, had that horrendous idea of a nickname, and refuses to tell me where it comes from. The rest of these idiots seemed to have picked it up, as well."

"You know, I think you secretly love it," Crope said, eyeing her suspiciously.

"Softens your edges a bit," Avaric agreed, his voice lowered in faux-contemplation. He leaned forward on his elbow, face resting in his palm. "Though I doubt anything could truly buffer that prickly exterior."

He reached forward to touch his face, but she swatted him irritably. "And what could possibly put such an absurd idea in your head, Master Crope?"

"Ooh, _Master_ Crope…" Tibbett purred, leaning up against the other boy. "I like that."

"What a thrill!" Crope cried. "Tibbs, you must promise to – "

"Save it for the bedroom, boys," Boq interrupted with a sigh.

"Will you be there?" Tibbett asked with a wink.

Avaric looked around and licked his lips a little excessively. "Soup. I want soup," he decided with a nod.

Elphaba raised an eyebrow at him. "Then go get soup."

"I prefer sausage, personally."

Tibbett and Avaric both roared with laughter at Crope's comment, though Elphaba didn't get it. She saw Fiyero smile shyly and blush – if it were at all possible with his complexion, at least – and Boq bury his face, which had reddened, in his hands.

"How about you, Fiyero?" Tibbett asked once they had calmed down some. "Are you a sausage fan?"

"Not so much," he said, and then gave the other boys an apologetic look when they practically deflated. "I've always been more of a doughnut fan, if you can believe that. Though I'm open to trying sausage."

His answer had apparently been good enough for the rest of the table, who were once again taken over by laughter. Like before, Elphaba was out of the loop, but she managed a hesitant, small smirk in response to their mirth. Avaric banged his fist on the table and just about choked on the piece of toast he had bitten off.

"Breathe, man, breathe!" Crope cried, hitting him on the back, and Avaric recovered enough to smack his shoulder.

"What about you, Miss Elphie?" Tibbett asked suddenly, his eyes sparkling. Boq began to protest the questioning, apparently knowing exactly where it was heading, but Crope shushed the Munchkin. "What do you prefer? Sausages or doughnuts?"

Cautiously, Elphaba glanced around the table, at Boq slowly shaking his head, at the eager looks of Avaric, Crope, and Tibbett, at the sympathetic glance of Fiyero. Part of her sensed that the question was more loaded with meaning than she was aware of, and she held back for a second before answering, taking a bite of her coffee cake and training her gaze on it. In truth, she didn't exactly know what it was she was going to say – she didn't want to give the wrong response and receive taunting regarding it for the rest of her life.

"Quite frankly, I haven't tried either."

There was a confused silence that fell over the table, and Crope tilted his head. "Well, that's fine. But which do you _prefer_?"

Elphaba swallowed hard and kept her gaze fixed on her plate, suddenly feeling as if she had certainly given the wrong answer. She didn't understand what they were asking of her, or how she should know what she preferred if she hadn't tried either. The options obviously had some sort of connotation that was going over her head. They were still staring at her expectantly, but she didn't know how to answer. She felt crowded, and mild annoyance bit at her.

With a sigh, Boq swooped in. "Leave her alone, guys. She clearly doesn't know. Some people are uneducated in certain matters."

"I am _not_ uneducated," Elphaba snapped at him.

"Perhaps just dense, then," Avaric said coolly. "After all, I'm sure there's some sort of kink that exists out there for disgusting verdant doughnuts. Nowadays, there's a kink for anything."

"And how many are you guilty of?" Fiyero inquired, leaning forward and giving the Gillikinese boy an accusatory look.

Avaric raised his glass of water towards his newest friend. "Touché."

After that one awkward moment, the morning passed rather smoothly. Crope and Tibbett continued to inspire innuendos, Boq was constantly blushing, Fiyero put in his two cents every now and then, Avaric taunted, and Elphaba tried to give input where she felt it was due. Sometimes, she even caused the now-familiar roar of laughter, though she didn't always know why whatever she had said would have such an effect. She still got insulted endlessly, but she found that everyone in the group did – it was just how they worked, and it wasn't as irritating as she had expected. She even found that she enjoyed it, to an extent. It was nothing short of a charmed circle.

 **XXX**

His foot tapped anxiously on the purple carpeted floor as he waited for the arrival of his headmistress. Boq knew exactly why he had been summoned to Madame Morrible's office by her strange ticktock thing on a Saturday night. He also knew that he wouldn't tell her what it is that she wanted to hear. He refused. It was far too dangerous, and he wouldn't be the one to cause what could surely only turn into a catastrophe.

For all he knew, Madame Morrible could have good intentions. For all he knew, she could want nothing more than to help Elphie. Ever since he had met the woman, though, during his first year at Shiz, he had felt something off about her. She had occurred to him, at first sight, as a woman who would do absolutely anything to get to higher ground.

Her office was impersonal – the decorations commonplace and austere. There were paintings, but they showed no religious or spiritual inclinations. There were trophies, but they were vague in shape and color. He could see writing on their bases, but it was too far away, almost hidden. Looking at the office, when empty, it could belong to anyone.

He wasn't sure how long he was in the room before she entered – there was no clock in plain sight – but when she did come inside, a swirling tornado of magenta and white, he immediately felt the temperature drop fifteen degrees.

"Master Boq, how wonderful of you to meet with me."

He forced a smile at her casual politeness as she took a seat across from him. "I am pleased to be here," he responded through gritted teeth.

The door opened again, and her ticktock thing wheeled back in, this time carrying a pitcher. "Don't spill, now," she warned it. It placed the pitcher on her desk and left almost immediately, almost in a fit, if ticktock things could have fits. She took the pitcher and poured some of its contents into a small china cup. "Tea?"

"No, thank you, Madame."

When she smiled, it was almost _too_ fake, almost _too_ sweet. She took a small sip of her tea, the glass clinking lightly as she put the cup back down. "How are your studies going, Master Boq? You're a second year, aren't you?"

"Yes, Madame. My studies are going well," he answered curtly.

"Your teachers did say you're one of the brightest in most of your classes. They did happen to mention a few distractions, however. What was it that Professor Veolun said? You aren't quite working to your potential. That was it."

Boq felt his face heat up a little, but he raised one shoulder nonchalantly. "I'm a college boy, Madame. Distractions are in order, aren't they? If distractions are what concern you, perhaps you should talk to my roommate, Master Avaric. He has far more than I do, anyway."

It was a bold move, and the pursing of her lips did not go unnoticed. "It is you that I wanted to speak to today," she said patiently.

"And what about?"

"Such disrespect!" she scoffed, shaking her head a little. "You know, I had a chat with your father about a week ago. We were discussing a very important matter, he and I. Do you happen to know anything about a sighting in Quadling Country, about three years ago? Witnesses say there was a wild, green creature running about just outside of Ovvels at the same time your family was there."

Boq felt his heart speed up nervously, but he forced himself to stay calm. He had to protect her. "A wild, green creature?" he asked incredulously. "Why, Madame, I've only ever known one green person before in my life, and I met her here at Shiz. Are you talking about an elf sighting?"

"Odd. Your father said you were attacked by it. I would have thought that to be a memorable thing."

He cocked his head to the side and looked at her curiously. "Madame, I have no idea what it is you're talking about. I've never even been to Quadling Country. My father is sick in the head. He has been for years now. Paranoid and forgetful." It hurt that it wasn't entirely a lie, but he told himself to focus on Elphie.

"If you refuse to cooperate, Master Boq, then perhaps I'll have to… _distract_ you," she said with a smile and leaned forward a little. Adrenaline coursed through his veins as she pulled out a small, clear vial. "Truth serum, if you can believe it. I haven't yet had the chance to use it on someone before."

He frowned and almost imperceptibly shrunk into himself. "Isn't it illegal for you to use that on a student?" he asked meekly.

Her dark eyes flicked up to him. "Only if the student squeals," she answered evenly.

"Why would I not?"

She raised her chin, and the challenge was clear on her face. "Because if you do, I will hurt the very person you feel you need to protect. Didn't you know she works for me? Your honesty is the only thing that may save her."

Part of Boq wanted to call her bluff. He wanted to insist that she wouldn't hurt Elphaba, that she couldn't, but the wiser part of his mind told him that she definitely would, and she definitely could, and perhaps, he'd have to give a little if he wanted her to be safe. He sighed. "Fine. Just put the serum away. I'll tell you everything."

Her lips curled into a smirk. "I don't trust you, Master Boq," she pointed out as she pulled a syringe from her desk and extracted some of the liquid. Before he could react, she had reached over the desk and emptied the syringe into his upper arm.

Boq let out something akin to a squeak and shot back, nearly falling out of his chair. He stood up abruptly and made for the door, but found that it had been locked by the ticktock thing. He stopped, standing in front of it, already feeling a strange sort of clarity come over him. _Protect her. Protect her. Protect her. Protect…_

"Now, Master Boq," came Madame Morrible's annoyed voice.

Slowly, he walked back towards her desk, reminding himself that this was the only way to keep Elphie safe. He righted his chair and sat down in it, staring numbly across to the headmistress.

"Good boy," she smiled. "Now. Do you remember the day when you were attacked by the green creature?"

"No." It was surprisingly easy to say, but only because it was true. Something forced him to elaborate, though, to explain _why_ he didn't remember, against his very will. "I wasn't attacked, Madame."

"But you did see a green thing in the town you stayed in, just outside of Ovvels?"

"Yes."

He cursed himself, but she only sat back triumphantly. "Was the creature wearing anything? Did it have anything on it?"

"Yes," he answered before he could stop himself.

"And what were these things?"

He clenched his jaw, trying hard not to answer, but a pain shot up the back of his neck, invading his skull. He gasped, and then spoke again, though his voice did not sound like his own. "A lab coat. She had a lab coat, far too long for her." He could almost picture it, clear as day.

Long, painted fingernails tapped against the desk, and then she took another sip of her tea. "Anything in the pockets?"

"I… I'm not certain. I didn't undress her, you know," he said, rolling his eyes in annoyance. "She was wearing nothing underneath – I could see that much at first glance. I helped her do it up, to preserve the modesty that I'm not entirely certain she had a sense of." His face immediately reddened, and he looked away.

Madame Morrible clicked her tongue impatiently. "Obviously, you didn't undress the thing. Did it _look_ like there was anything in the pockets, though?"

It did. He did notice something. Boq worked his jaw and stared hard at the ground, trying to fight the growing pain in the back of his head. A ringing sounded in his eardrums, and he could vaguely hear Madame Morrible urging him to give in, to let the serum soothe him, and eventually – whether it was seconds or hours later, he couldn't say – he did.

"A book," he spat suddenly, glaring at the headmistress. "A book. It looked like she had a book in the pocket of the lab coat. It was vaguely book-shaped. Alright? Is that what you wanted to hear?"

Her smirk told him everything.

"Thank you, Master Boq. You're free to go."

 **XXX**

Family weekend. If you asked Galinda, it was an entirely horrendous prospect. It seemed to be all her friends were able to talk about ever since the news of the green bean's sister faded out of the gossiping ring. Occasionally, they'd mention her, but they acted pretty bored with it all by now.

No. Now, all they were willing and able to talk about was their parents.

She had excused herself from dinner early and retired to her bed, grateful to find that her awful green roommate was nowhere in sight. She had curled up against her headrest, burying her face in her arms and trying to forget about the impending weekend before she realized that she needed something to occupy herself with.

And that's when she did something truly unpredictable.

She worked on her homework.

That, unfortunately, didn't last long, though, as a headache quickly came over her. With a huff, she pushed the unfinished essay away. She had no idea how her roommate did this so constantly. Eventually, she resigned to sleep, figuring that nothing else seemed to soothe her. Maybe, if she went to sleep, she'd wake up and find that family weekend had been cancelled, or a letter from her parents, claiming that they were far too busy to make a trip down to Shiz. _Hopeful wishing_ , she thought to herself as she drifted off.

 _The sun was beginning to set, and she felt her feelings begin to set with it. She was only ten years old, but she already hated sunsets. She held the bundle of lavender and yellow flowers she had been picking in the meadow close to her body and ran over to where her father was sitting in his porch swing, gently rocking back and forth._

" _Oh, is that for me, Pumpkin?" he asked as she approached with the flowers. She nodded and gleefully handed him the bouquet. He smiled and sniffed it. "These are heavenly!" he exclaimed, and then put them aside and reached out, pulling his daughter close. "I know someone_ more _heavenly, though…"_

" _Popsicle!" she shrieked as he began to tickle her relentlessly. "Papa, stop! I… I can't… Breathe… Papa!" She was grinning from ear to ear in spite of her protests, even as he released her and hugged her on his lap._

 _He pressed a light kiss to her forehead. "How did I end up with a daughter so wonderful? I must be the luckiest man in the world."_

" _You are," she told him matter-of-factly, and then pulled back and struck a little pose. He laughed and brushed her hair behind her ear. An idea struck her and she gasped. "Oh, Papa, do you think we can ride the horses? I know it's late, but the sun isn't gone yet!"_

" _Of course we can, darling," he said, and then eased her off her lap and stood. He took her small hand in his and began to lead her over towards the stables._

 _She was so happy, skipping alongside her father, that she almost forgot about how the sun was going down. She truly almost forgot about how the lack of sunlight hurt her mood. She was happy enough with her father that the rest would slowly begin to fall away._

" _Galinda!"_

 _They paused at the sound of her mother's voice. She shared a look with her father, and then slowly trudged back towards the house. There was her mother, blonde curls tightly framing a gorgeous, feminine face. As Galinda approached her, she could make out her mother's mouth, fit into a firm, hard line that completely contradicted the soft curvature of her jaw and gentle shape of her cheekbones._

" _Yes, Mumsie?"_

" _What are you doing?"_

 _In spite of herself, Galinda couldn't help a small flinch at the harsh tone in her mother's voice. "I… I was going to ride horses with Popsicle," she answered honestly._

 _Her mother raised her eyebrows slightly, glaring at the ten year-old. "Is that ladylike?" she asked in a dangerous tone._

"… _No, Mumsie."_

 _With a curt nod, her mother took hold of her jaw and forced her to meet her gaze. "You need to stop acting like a man, Galinda, and learn how to be a pretty little fool. Ladies don't ride horses. You are not going to ride horses anymore."_

 _She swallowed hard, suddenly finding it harder and harder to breathe. "B-but I like riding horses…" she cried, tears beginning to streak down her face._

 _A hand struck her across the cheek, and she fell to the floor, clutching the side of her face. When she looked back up, terror written clearly in her eyes, her mother only smiled triumphantly._

" _You are not going to ride horses anymore."_

 **A/N: Thank you all so much for reading! Please leave me a review to let me know how I'm doing / what you think! You know you want to... that little button is so tempting!**


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N: So... Um, yeah. Today is the one year anniversary of me posting A Wickless Candle, and after a few minor setbacks, I really pushed last night to get this chapter ready for you guys. This one is _much_ longer than I was expecting - around 8500 words (the second largest posted is 7700 or so), and next chapter is going to be over 9000, since apparently, I don't know how to regulate chapter length lol.**

 **Anyway, I have next chapter fully written, but it does need some editing. This is finals week for me, so I won't have a ton of time, but I plan to post chapter 11 in one week, on Monday, December 16th, for you all.**

 **I wanted to thank everyone for their patience, and for reviewing - seeing the little reviews gives me a lot of motivation to keep writing, and it always makes me so happy to see. I hope you guys enjoy this chapter, and I'll hopefully see you again next week!**

 **TW for abuse.**

The sun had long since gone down when she left Room 22 in Crage Hall, donning a dark coat and a scarf that she had bought just the other day in anticipation of the cooling weather, the latter of which was wrapped around her face to conceal as much of her skin as physically possible. She glanced down at her uncovered hands and thought that it wouldn't be a bad idea to use part of her next paycheck to purchase gloves. For now, she shoved the conspicuous appendages into the pockets of her coat and ducked her head.

The campus was quiet, but she feared being caught and having to answer as to where exactly she was going and why. She admonished herself for being paranoid – it was far too late for anyone to catch her, and besides that, it was a short walk to the buttery.

The doors were locked, of course. She had been expecting that. As she approached, she had held her breath, trying them just to make sure they were locked. That was good. The doors being locked meant that there was no one inside. She didn't know what she'd do if she'd come all this way, and gone to all this trouble, just to be ambushed at her very destination.

She steadied her hands against her thighs before reaching into the pocket of her frock and withdrawing a small pin that she had lifted from her roommate's side of the room. She pried it open to an angle and then bent down and went to work on the lock.

Shell had shown her how to do this once. Why he, at ten years old, knew how to pick locks, and where he learned it, was far beyond her. She never asked. It had been months since she had seen him, and her heart sank a little as she realized it would be far longer before she would see him again. After all, part of the deal she had struck with Frexspar was that she wouldn't return to Nest Hardings ever again.

The university offered housing over break, and her side of the deal was that she would stay for the remained of her time attending – and his side was that he would claim her as family, however distant, and pay for both her academics and her housing.

It wasn't like she particularly _wanted_ to see Frexspar again. Except she did. In spite of how much she hated the stupid, boorish man, she found herself longing to learn more about him, in a way that she hadn't ever experienced before. She did not admire him. She couldn't. She had no real interest in him besides him being the one to have created her, and despite the fact that it was Nessa and Nanny that actually appeared to care about her to an extent, Frexspar was the closest thing she would ever come to actually having a parent.

But that was all besides the point. Back to the present.

After some fiddling with the pin, she managed to get the door unlocked, and she slipped inside. It was dark, but she was nothing if not prepared, and found an oil lamp in the storage room, drawing a match from her pocket to light it.

A rush of relief swept through her as she did a small round through the building and found that she was, indeed, alone. She went through the door that led onto the stage, stopping abruptly once she had ascended up onto it.

There was the piano, sitting there, looking nothing short of lonely. She didn't know what exactly had entranced her about it, but in the few days since she had first voluntarily sat with Boq and his friends, she found herself getting distracted by the pianist that now played during lunchtime every day. It wasn't the man himself that she cared for – in fact, she hardly even remembered what he looked like. It was the music that she found enchanting. The way his fingers would dance across the keys. The best part was when he would sing alongside his playing. He had an okay voice – not bad, but not wonderful, either. The words coincided so nicely with the music that she couldn't help but listen intently every single time he sang with the piano.

Now that there was no one around, she was finally able to approach the instrument. She hesitated, but then sat down on the bench and pulled it up close. She raised her fingers and let them rest gently on the pearl keys, taking a deep breath and letting it out with her eyes closed. Slowly, surely, she pressed two of them.

It sounded rather awful, to be truthful. She winced and looked down at them. She pressed one key, and then another, and then another, carefully gliding right with her dominant hand. They sounded nice still when played individually, since she didn't seem to know how to make the notes sound nice when played together.

She let her fingers go left again, listening to the pitch drop with each key further that she went. Left was lower, and right was higher. She tried playing some together again, focusing on the sound and trying to remember which combinations sounded good.

After a few minutes, she paused, letting her hand drop off of the piano. She swallowed hard and looked around cautiously. Finding nothing, she unwrapped the scarf from around her head, her eyelids fell back over her eyes, and she inhaled deeply. She recalled a tune, something she had heard from a street performer back in Quadling Country. Time seemed to slow as she replayed it within her head, and then, for the first time in her life, she opened her mouth, and she sang.

" _I've heard there was a secret chord that Qori played and it pleased the Lord, but you don't really care for music, do you? It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth; the minor fall, the major lift – the baffled king composed Hallelujah."_

She repeated that last word a few more times, wondering briefly what it might have meant and trying to remember the next verse. Once it occurred to her, she moved on.

" _Your faith was strong but you needed proof. You saw her bathing on the roof; her beauty in the moonlight overthrew you. She tied you to a kitchen chair; she broke your throne, she cut your hair, and from your lips she drew the Hallelujah."_

Again, she paused, trying to recallhow the next phrase started. For the life of her, she could not find it in her memory. She was about to give up completely and perhaps retire to Crage Hall for the night when there was a small crash, off in a corner of the buttery.

Immediately, she shot up, glaring towards the sound with her fists clenched at her side. An empty mop bucket laid on its side, and standing right beside it was a familiar blond-framed face.

"Master Crope, what are you _doing_ here?" she hissed.

For his part, he looked considerably embarrassed. He approached regardless and hopped up onto the stage, rather than taking the actual entrance. "I could very well ask you the same thing, Miss Elphie," he pointed out. "Why are you here, at one in the morning, invading the stage and taking advantage of this poor, defenseless piano?"

She shifted uncomfortably and crossed her arms over her chest. "I haven't the faintest clue what you mean," she raised an eyebrow dangerously, daring him to continue.

Much to her chagrin, he seemed mostly unaffected by her silent threat. "I work nights here. We were a bit understaffed today, so I volunteered to stay late and make sure the place gets cleaned up. Your turn."

She gave him a stiff shrug. "I wanted to try it. It seems to me, however, that I have no musical talent whatsoever, and so, I shan't be trying it again."

Crope softened a little. "I would disagree. Your singing was quite lovely," he told her earnestly.

"Nothing about me is 'lovely', Master Crope," she said and barked out a harsh cackle. He winced a little, and then gave her a sympathetic look, only worsening her confusion.

He looked towards the piano. "I could teach you, if you want," he offered. "After all, the piano is something that takes practice and a tutor to truly get the hang of."

Elphaba cast a sidelong glance towards the instrument, debating whether or not to trust him. She didn't know why, but something felt so unbelievably vulnerable about the fact that he had heard her sing for the first time in her life, and she hated it.

"You would teach me? Why?"

His grin was almost infectious. "Because you're my friend," he said as if it were the simplest thing in the world. He sat down on the piano bench and beckoned her over, and against her better judgment, she complied.

"This key here is middle C," he stated and pressed one of the pearl keys. "It's the note precisely between treble clef and bass clef – I'm a tad unprepared at the moment, but I can show you what those look like and how to read them later. Since this note is C, the one to the right would be D, then E, then F. Except in music, after G, we reset back to A. So, the notes go A, B, C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C, so on and so forth."

"What are the black ones?"

"Chromatics. They occupy the space between two natural notes. See, this key in between C and D has a pitch that is exactly halfway in between C and D."

"What would we call that note?"

"We could call it C sharp, or D flat."

Elphaba played around with the keys, playing a C, then the note in between, and then D. She noticed something to the left and frowned. "There's no note between B and C."

"No, there's not, nor is there one between E and F. See, between C and C sharp is a half-step, and then C sharp to D is a half-step. So, C to D is a whole step. There isn't a whole step between B and C or E and F, though. There's only a half-step."

"Why?"

"Just the way things are, I suppose. I'm not really a theorist, so I couldn't tell you how it works. Here, I'm going to teach you a C major scale."

She wasn't certain how long the lesson went on, Crope explaining musical terms as best he could and being entirely patient when she would question things. They played some, too, and she was delighted to actually be able to make a nice sound from the piano. She enjoyed it far more than she had ever expected she would.

It had been late when she had come in, and now, she was beginning to feel the weariness of the day seep into her bones. "Would you like to meet again and learn more?" Crope asked once he noticed this.

"I… suppose that wouldn't be an awful idea," she agreed nonchalantly. Standing up, she gave him a curt nod and left the buttery before she could confuse herself even more than she already had.

 **XXX**

Ozian Literature was easily Elphaba's second favorite class, she reflected as she sat down at her desk that Thursday morning. It didn't matter to her that she shared the class with her pompous, puzzling roommate. She enjoyed learning from Professor Sorrel, and she was an excellent teacher. In the books they had read over the course of the semester, Elphaba found that she had not had a single one she disliked.

One thing that Professor Sorrel had told them on the first day of classes was that she always strove to include diversity in her class. "No one wants to solely read the works of old, white Gillikinese men, right?" she had joked with them.

Elphaba rather agreed. Old, white Gillikinese men had their time and place, but they were not the only people in history capable of constructing novels. In fact, her own favorite, _The Rose and the Pearl_ – the dearest possession she had – was written by a female Quadling who was an escaped slave, herself. In this class, Elphaba had come to understand how the life of the author (among other things) could influence the story and writing, and she wondered if the author of her most treasured possession, Qa'ria Koriq, channeled some of her own emotions and hate into the words that she wrote. After reading it almost thirty times now, she still wasn't sure of the answer.

Part of her wanted to ask Professor Sorrel whether she knew the story, or the author, but part of her also wanted to keep it to herself, like a treasure that only she could access, especially if her professor _hadn't_ heard of it. Then, the secret would be ever more sacred. It seemed, sometimes, as if Professor Sorrel knew every single piece of literature ever written, but she had never mentioned _The Rose and the Pearl_ or its author before.

She had been one of the first students to step into class, but Elphaba knew that it wouldn't last. Sure enough, Miss Galinda and one of her wicked friends, Miss Milla, arrived just before the start of the class, and they took their seats near the back. Elphaba felt a wadded up piece of paper hit the back of her head not long after, and it was little wonder who threw it. Her suspicions were confirmed by the familiar snickering, but she refrained from reading the paper, merely picking it up and crossing the room to the trashcan, where she dropped the offensive thing, and returning to her seat without a single glance towards her roommate.

"Alright, class," Professor Sorrel announced as she swept into the classroom, the long sleeves of her dress flowing in the breeze she created by the urgency she always carried. "We are officially finished with _Heavy Minds_. Today, we'll be started on a new book. I'm sure you all know the famous children's story of Innenfastker."

There were a few groans that echoed throughout the room, but Professor Sorrel soldiered on. "The tale of Innenfastker is adapted from the novel by Marlie Sherellyn by the same name," she explained. "Can anyone tell me the simplified tale?"

Milla raised her hand, and didn't hesitate to speak without even being called in. "Isn't it about this really lonely Gillikinese guy that makes a monster and it ends up killing people?"

Professor Sorrel forced a smile. "Along those lines, Miss Milla. Sherellyn tells the tale of Vectus Innenfastker, and she does so in a frame story. Can anyone tell me what a frame story is?"

Elphaba's hand shot up.

"Professor, a frame story is when there is a story told inside another. Such as someone telling another story as part of their own."

"Very good. I'm glad someone in this class pays attention to my lectures," Professor Sorrel praised, and in spite of herself, Elphaba couldn't help a small smile.

The discussion went a little more in-depth, though not much of the actual novel was explained afterwards, as they were just about to read it over the last six weeks before winter break. Not long after, the actual novels were passed out, and Elphaba held it with the same reverence that she did every other book. After all, as she had realized earlier, books were never confused. They believed in their own truths, even if no one else did. They were able to express everything and nothing all at once. That which she feared she would never be able to understand because she simply wasn't made for it, they knew perfectly well, and oh, how they liked to _taunt_ her with their secrets!

She immediately opened the book and began reading the first few pages, without even being instructed to. Their homework for the weekend before class met again on Tuesday would be to read the first two chapters, but Elphaba knew that she could very well be finished with the entire novel by then. After all, when she wanted to read… She could certainly do so for a long time, and it wasn't like she really had anything else planned for the weekend.

It was family weekend, she remembered. Her own family – if they could be called such – had just visited, and left on less-than-desirable terms, so she had nothing out of the ordinary planned. It briefly crossed her mind that her roommate might have _her_ parents visiting, but Elphaba reasoned that that didn't concern her either way, and held herself back from glancing towards the blonde. She could only imagine what the parents of such a confusing girl could be like, and part of her aimed to never find out. If they were anything like her daughter, she had nothing to look forward to but ridicule.

Even now, as she delved into the book, she could hear Miss Galinda and Miss Milla giggling about something behind her, and she didn't have to wonder what the subject of their mirth was. As always, though, she faced forward, stood her ground, and braced herself to face whatever they threw at her. She could handle it.

 _Tough skin_ …

The class ended shortly after the books were passed out, and Elphaba immediately stood, shouldering her bag. She wondered briefly if she should ask Professor Sorrel about Qa'ria Koriq, but she never got the chance when she felt a hand tap her shoulder. She looked behind her and saw Boq standing there, looking a bit on edge.

"Miss Elphie?" he asked hesitantly. "Could we, um… talk? In private?"

She narrowed her eyes in suspicion at him. "Why would you want to talk to me in private, Master Boq?"

He sighed and just gestured for her to follow him. Seeing no reason not to, she obeyed, trailing a couple of steps behind. They wove together through hallways and up a staircase before they found an empty storage closet. It was here that Boq stopped, urging her in. No less suspicious than before, she entered, and he followed behind, closing the door.

She merely waited for him to say something first, her arms crossed over her chest. For once, though, he seemed to have nothing to say, wringing his hands in front of him. After almost a full minute like this, he sighed again and met her eyes. "Miss Elphie, I may not have been… Entirely truthful to you thus far. We've met before, and I… I know your secret."

Immediately, she stiffened, her eyes widening slightly and her hands clenching into fists at her side. "Wh-what secret?" she stammered.

"The one where you're not normal. Now, granted, I don't know the full of it, but… I was there, just outside of Ovvels, the day you were created. You came to our town. It was a miserable night, though, and I was the only one outside. I… I tried to talk to you, but you didn't seem to talk very well. I can remember it, clear as day, you know. 'Et wid beh oooka. Sisser burm.' I asked your name, and although you didn't seem to fully understand what I was asking, you were smart. I think you tried to say 'Elphaba', but the best I could gather from it was 'Elphie'."

"…Which is why you call me that…" she murmured, her throat tight.

"Yes, but there's more. I was trying to protect you, but my father and the townspeople began to pelt you with stuff. I don't know the specifics of anything, but I did notice what looked like a book in your pocket. And… I think Madame Morrible is after you or something. She called me into her office, not long ago. She kept asking me questions about you, about that _day_ , and when I refused to tell her anything, she…" He sighed and hugged himself. "She used a truth serum on me. I still tried to resist, but it was much more difficult. I… I told her about the book."

Elphaba swallowed hard and closed her eyes for a moment, trying to control her erratic breathing. "What does all of this mean?" she dared to ask.

With a small shrug, Boq began scuffing his toe on the ground. "I don't know. I don't know what she wants with you. All I know is that she knows about the book, and you might be in danger."

"Okay…" she said quietly, and then opened her eyes and met his gaze. "How much time do you have? I'll tell you everything I know."

 **XXX**

The week passed _far_ too slowly for Galinda's tastes – and yet, not slow enough. Her parents' arrival that Saturday morning hung over her like a storm cloud. She tried to bury it all and ignore it, laugh with her friends as she normally would – joke with them and enjoy their company – but as much as she tried to distract herself, the fact that her parents would be here, on campus, at the end of the week was too much for her to deflect completely.

For what it was worth, she was excited to see her father. She had always had a close connection with him. He was always there to cheer her up after her mother inevitably made her upset, whether it was by yelling at her, pressuring her, or…

Well, the point was, he was there for her. She had no doubt that he would make this weekend a little better, but that didn't completely diffuse the dread.

The moment the carriage pulled up, her heart had called it quits and fallen down to her stomach. She was grateful when her father was the first one to step out, his face lifted with a warm smile as he took her in.

"Ah, my darling Galinda!" he exclaimed and stepped forward, enveloping her in a hug. She giggled and hugged him back, a genuine smile pulling at the corners of her mouth.

"I've missed you, Popsicle," she told him.

"Hopefully not too much," came a cold voice from behind them, and they split up to face her mother, who had just been helped out of the carriage by a servant. She had a stern look, but she wasn't frowning – she never did, Galinda thought, as they caused unpretty lines. Or maybe it was too much work. One or the other.

Galinda swallowed the lump in her throat and forced a smile onto her face. "Hello, Mumsie," she said.

Larena Arduenna looked around, taking in the plain buildings they were beside. She scoffed, displeasure clearly written into her features. "Is _this_ where you wanted to go so badly, Galinda? It's a bit… uncultured, don't you think?"

"There's more to it," Galinda assured her, though it seemed to do very little.

"Is your roommate home, Pumpkin? I'm sure we'd love to meet her," her father said to clear as much of the tension as he could.

"That's doubtful," she muttered.

Larena narrowed her eyes slightly. "Are you muttering again? I've told you how unladylike that is. Don't you start again, or I might have to beat you."

"…Yes, Mumsie. Right this way."

With that, she turned and began to lead her parents through the campus. Her mother continued to make snide remarks about everything she could, but Galinda did a pretty good job of ignoring them and focusing on the task at hand, and Highmuster was able to rein her in well enough before things got out of control.

It was clear that her mother knew very little about architecture, Galinda reflected, if only to calm herself down. What her mother saw as 'shoddy' and 'ancient', Galinda saw instead as minimalist. Shiz's West Campus was built during the Oz-Wide Depression, as a feeble attempt to get the economy running again. There was historic significance to the basic construction of the buildings – there was so much history that her mother simply didn't care about.

After all, her mother had never cared for architecture the way she had. Neither had her father, really, but he was certainly more open to her love of it than her mother. In fact, he had been the only one to support it. It was because of him that she was here, attending Shiz. If he hadn't put his foot down with his wife and declared that _yes_ , their daughter would be getting an education if she wanted it, then she would have been married off to a wealthy, hideous – and likely abusive or flawed in some way – husband.

She wanted to be _more_ than a trophy wife for the rest of her life… Her mother may be okay with it, but she wasn't. She wanted more out of life. What was the point of living if you would always be submissive to someone else? If she was going to be married off, she wanted to be married to someone she liked, if not loved, and she wanted him to be loaded, so she could spend as much money on architecture and architectural studies as she desired.

"Don't tell me _that_ 's the building."

…But first, she had to survive this weekend.

Galinda gritted her teeth before forcing her face to relax into a smile. "Yes, it is. That's Crage Hall. There's a good chance my roommate won't be home. She spends a lot of time in the library, you know," she said, hoping that voicing the words would make them true. She wouldn't want to subject Miss Elphaba to the cruelties and tongue of her mother. Truthfully, she wouldn't want to subject anyone to her mother, but Miss Elphaba least of all. Oz knows she received enough ridicule as it was.

For a moment, Galinda paused, shocked at the thought she'd just had. She had to remind herself how awful, rude, and detestable her vegetable roommate was. In fact, Miss Elphaba was just mean enough that she, if no one else, ought to deserve the harsh words and criticisms of Larena Arduenna.

Deep down, Galinda knew that she didn't mean that, but that didn't stop herself from thinking it anyway, because she knew that it's what she was supposed to think about the green leech.

Still, she couldn't help but wonder just how bad her mother's reaction would be when she did see her…

"What's your room number, darling?" her father asked lightly, trying to settle some of the tension in the air.

"Twenty-two," she answered simply, and then realized how she must be coming across. "Forgive me," she smiled at them. "I was up late last night studying for an exam I have on Monday. I'm just a bit tired."

"Studying?" her mother asked with a raised eyebrow, and then scoffed. "You certainly need it. Lurline only knows how we had wished to have a more intelligent child."

Clenching her jaw to keep her tongue still, Galinda merely widened her smile as she led her parents up the flight of stairs. Once again, she prayed that her roommate would be absent, but when she opened the door to Room 22, the familiar green leech was sitting on her bed, jack-knifed in the corner with her book held too close to her face in that familiar position of hers. Galinda had to bite back a groan.

Elphaba's eyes flicked up briefly to see who had entered, then returned to her book, and then quickly raised again to fully take in the sight of Galinda's parents. Her father had initially recoiled, but had recovered himself and was poking about Galinda's side of the room, making proud comments on how well his daughter had kept her stuff clean.

However, Larena was still frozen in the doorway, her eyes wide open with fear. " _That_ … is your roommate?" she hissed.

Blue and dark chocolate eyes met. Elphaba quirked an eyebrow. Galinda furrowed hers slightly and glanced towards the doorway, where her mother stood. Elphaba raised one shoulder in a sort of half-shrug. The conversation was settled.

After closing her book and setting it gently in its spot in her bookcase, Elphaba slid to the edge of her bed and let her legs dangle for a couple seconds before she pushed herself up with her hands. It was with a blank, bored look that she took a few daring steps forward. "Charmed, I'm sure," she said. "Now, if you don't mind, I have an appointment at the library. You know how it is."

Once Larena gained control of her muscles again, she almost stepped aside and let the green thing through, but then a thought seemed to cross her mind and she blocked the doorway again. She crossed her arms and glared at Elphaba, who seemed, for once, at a loss for what to do.

"What _are_ you, you disgusting thing?"

Galinda tried to catch her roommate's gaze so that she could maybe silently apologize, but Elphaba proved to be rather self-capable when it came to this sort of thing.

"I'm a _who_ , not a _what_ , thank you very much," Elphaba responded. "Oh, does the skin bother you? It's not contagious. Well, at least not that I know… There are some here who do have theories, though. I've personally never actually tried to infect someone else with my complexion. It's an interesting hypothesis that some of them have… For the sake of science, I suppose I must try it at some point. Would you care to volunteer?"

Larena scowled but stood her ground in spite of Elphaba's tongue. "I most certainly would not care to volunteer! Now, answer my question, freak!"

"I thought I did. I'm a scientist by nature and a maverick by nurture. I also happen to be strong-bodied by design and strong-willed by choice. Now, since all is fair in the throes of war – or, as I like to call it, _college_ – what are you?"

"I am a lady, and I would be treated as nothing less. You, on the other hand, are anything but."

"And that very well may be true. Who's to say?" Elphaba shrugged with a cocky smirk. "Did I forget to introduce myself? How rude of me. Perhaps I was too caught up in your accusations and insults. My name is Elphaba Thropp."

She extended her hand to be shook, but Larena just stared at it in mild horror.

"Thropp? Like the Eminent Thropp?" came Highmuster's sudden intrusion into their standoff.

Elphaba seemed to consider this for a second, placing a bony finger on her chin. "Why, yes. My grandfather, of sorts. It's a complicated family history – I won't bore you with the details – but I'm next in line. The Thropp Third Descending, if you want the full glory of it all." She then looked towards Galinda. "Isn't that a title more powerful than your own?"

Stiff with shock at the whole exchange and incredibly impressed, Galinda could do little more than nod. Still, it seemed to be enough, as Elphaba smiled and turned back to the older Arduenna in the doorway. "Yes, I thought so. Now, if you _don't_ mind, I truly do have to get to the library. Milady," she mimed tipping a hat to Larena, and then shot a quick, triumphant look towards Galinda as her mother moved aside. "Catch you later, Blondie," she said with a wink, and then slipped out through the doorway.

The room was quiet for almost a full minute, as if no one could truly comprehend the mysterious whirlwind that was Elphaba Thropp. After what felt like hours, the silence was finally invaded by Highmuster.

"…You know, dearest, if you'd just let her past in the first place – "

"Shut it," Larena warned, and then smoothed down her dress. She crossed over to Galinda's vanity and ran a hand over her hair, righting her headpiece. _A perfect, beautiful image, as always…_ "Darling, I think I shall have a talk with your headmistress over that roommate of yours. It unfortunately might be too late to switch you to another room now, but after Lurlinemas break, we can certainly get you a less colorful roommate."

"I thought you liked color, Mumsie." The words were out before she could stop them, but luckily, her mother didn't take offense to it.

"Color fits where color is due."

The implications that green was not due on a person's body were loud and clear. Galinda swallowed hard as an idea entered her mind. It would certainly be daring… More daring than she figured she'd ever been when it came to her mother. Part of her insisted that it was a bad idea, but another part of her argued that she was eighteen years old, and she was attending university, and she didn't need to be afraid of her mother anymore. That alone was enough for her stupid determination to win over.

"…I actually rather like Miss Elphaba, you know. I was looking forward to rooming with her next semester, too."

Galinda was surprised at how easily the words came out. She would have thought that such a blatant lie would be harder to form on her tongue, but instead, it felt almost relieving to say – whatever that meant was far beyond her.

Her mother's blue eyes narrowed in hate, but knowing the look all too well, Highmuster knew just when to jump in and change the subject. "You do have a rather pretty view from your window, Pumpkin," he stated as he looked out the window that was right beside her bed. "You always did like the spaces closest to the open air."

… _Closest to escape._ She didn't dare voice that thought. Instead, she smiled and approached her father, letting herself forget her mother's presence for once. "It's only the second floor, but the courtyard of Crage Hall is one of my favorite places in Shiz."

Not one to be forgotten easily, Larena stepped closer and glanced out the window, as well. "There's steam in the air. No sight can be pretty with steam in the air."

"A factory, with tick tock things, I presume," Highmuster said in delight, his mustache twitching. "I'd love to see it up close. It's amazing what people have begun to accomplish with tick tock things! Dear, did you know that there's dwarfs who have created tick tock things capable of cleaning dishes? How much time that would save!"

"Our headmistress, Madame Morrible, has a tick tock thing as a servant. It's quite advanced, I think," Galinda informed them, much to her father's excitement and her mother's disgust.

"What all does it do?"

Galinda shrugged at her father's question. "I haven't spent too much time with the headmistress since explaining Ama Clutch's situation to her."

"Where is that old fool, anyway?" Larena questioned.

"In her room, usually. It's barely half the size of this one. She spends most of her time knitting or something when she's not out with my friends and I or doing our laundry. Elphaba doesn't typically go anywhere besides the library and the buttery."

"Your friends?"

Suddenly, Galinda's throat went dry again, and she tried to subtly clear it. "Yes. Three wonderful girls from established families. There's Miss Pfannee of Pfann Hall, Miss Shenshen of the Minkos, and Miss Milla of Center Munch."

If at all possible, her mother looked almost impressed. "The Minkos Clan? They're one of the wealthiest families in Gillikin. Have you looked into whether this Miss Shenshen has an unmarried uncle or something of the sort?"

"Not yet, but I was going to look into it," Galinda responded through gritted teeth. She couldn't even go one day without her mother bringing up the prospect of marriage. The funniest part, she thought, was the fact that she had _told_ them all about her friends already, and her roommate, over letters, but apparently they hadn't paid any attention at all. At least, her mother hadn't…

"It's a beautiful day out, don't you think, Larena dear? Maybe Galinda would like to show us around Shiz."

"Yes, that is a good idea," Larena smiled to her husband. "We can even try to meet her friends while we're out."

Grinning convincingly at her parents, Galinda beckoned for them to follow her as she began to lead the way down the stairs and out of Crage Hall altogether. "There's this delightful little opera house that I think you'd enjoy, Mumsie."

 **XXX**

Much to Galinda's relief, the day seemed to pass much quicker than she had been dreading. It also happened to be more painless. After the initial run-in with Elphaba, her mother didn't cause much trouble besides her normal offhand, degrading comments at every store they walked into, every performance they saw, and every person they talked to. They had managed to find Galinda's friends in a small diner and had sat down to eat with them.

Unsurprisingly, Larena got along just swell with the other high-society girls. Highmuster maintained his aloof cheerfulness, if only to stop tensions from rising too high whenever his wife would make a testy remark. Galinda's friends seemed to like her perfectly fine as she was, though. That was perhaps the one thing that Galinda hadn't had any doubt about. Her parents had also informed her, earlier in the day, that they would be taking their leave around noon on the Sunday, so they didn't get back to Frottica too late.

That was all fine with her, of course. They had decided to go back to her shared room in Crage Hall and talk for the rest of the evening after eating a nice meal at a restaurant that her mother actually seemed impressed at – after all, only two backhanded comments were made about it, so she truly must've liked the quality of food and service.

"…And then I told Old Wiler that the next time a degenerate thug came onto our farm and tried to steal our crops, he could just shoot the man's arm clean off. After all, he who thieves shall lose that which he thieves with. Maybe, with one less hand on every thief, there will be that much less that is stolen. If a thief is foolish enough to try to steal again after that, then he deserves to live a handless and disabled life."

"Such gruesome talk," Larena complained. "Please, Highmuster, no more of this ridiculousness of yours. You know as well as I do that the day you finally let a severed hand touch my property is the day you find yourself miserable and alone."

Galinda couldn't help but think that her father might have had a point, even if his solution was far from appropriate. Sinning once was bad enough, but to commit the same sin a second time proved a true fool. The same could be said for mistakes, she figured. _Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me._ She didn't know where she had first heard that quote, but she had always liked it.

Her father was able to keep the conversation pleasant (as much as he thought pleasant, anyway) for most of the night, but she knew that the time would come when the snake would shed her skin and grow restless. The sun had already escaped when she heard that fateful tone in her mother's voice.

"So, Galinda… Do tell me about the suitors you have asking for your hand. You have mentioned your despicable roommate more often than wealthy men. Surely, you must have _someone_ after you. You may be defective, but I didn't think you that much of a disappointment."

Taking a deep breath, Galinda tried to center herself. "A Winkie prince just transferred here, Mumsie. Fiyero is his name. Fiyero Tigelaar."

"And he's asked for your hand?"

"Well… I haven't actually talked to him yet," Galinda revealed with a small blush beginning to creep over her cheeks. "But I plan to! I have no doubt I can woo him if I want."

Her mother stood up abruptly, and out of instinct, Galinda did, too. " _Darling_ , you really need to be taking your future more seriously. This… This university will not make you wealthy and happy. This boorish, mannish subject you insist on studying is no career for a lady. Really, ladies should not have careers. They're not cut out for it."

A rush of courage flashed through Galinda as she caught her father's eye, and she remembered what she had told herself earlier. She was eighteen. She was in university. She didn't have to listen to her mother anymore.

"No, Mumsie. _You're_ not cut out for it. I, on the other hand, am perfectly cut out for it. You think you own me, but you don't. Not anymore. Just you watch. I'm going to become the best Ozdamned architect that Gillikin has ever – "

A hand struck her. Galinda stumbled, her courage leaving her as quickly as it had came. She took a couple steps back swiftly and held her jaw, staring at her mother in wide, terrified eyes. Neither of them noticed the door open just before.

"Now, you listen to me, you little bitch," her mother seethed. "You are mine. You are _mine_. I _own_ you. I always have, and I always will, and if you think that you can defy me…"

Her hand raised again and she took a threatening step forward.

"I think you should leave."

All three of them were taken aback by the sudden voice coming from the doorway. Elphaba stood there, her hands down at her sides and her face in a perfect mask of calmness.

"What did you just say to me?" Larena hissed.

Elphaba took a few steps forward, approaching the woman without fear. "You heard me. This is my room as much as Galinda's and I'm kicking you out."

Offended, Larena directed her raised hand towards Elphaba. "How dare you!" She tried to strike, but Elphaba matched her speed and strength, holding her arm effortlessly.

"Perhaps I should rephrase myself. Perhaps you misunderstood. I think you should leave." Elphaba bared her teeth and shoved the older woman back. "Now. And if you ever, _ever_ lay a hand on your daughter again, then you will come to sorely regret the very moment that you were born." She leaned in close. " _Go_."

Highmuster finally sprung into action, not wasting time in grabbing his wife by the arm and muttering something in her ear as he whisked her away.

The adrenaline finally dying down, Elphaba let out a breath, turning to face Galinda, who was staring at her with wide eyes. Elphaba closed her eyes for a second to gather herself. "Has she always…?" One nod from her roommate confirmed it. "You should sit."

Obediently, Galinda did, propping herself up on her luxurious bed and burying her face in her hands. It wasn't long before she felt a weight settle on the bed beside her.

For a long time, neither of them said anything. Galinda began to cry, not even caring about appearances anymore. Scorching pain shot through her jaw, and it felt like crying was the only thing she could do, the only way she could control anything. She didn't want to think about her mother's wrath, or her father's pitiful looks, or that strange, protective rage she had seen in Elphaba's eyes. She couldn't control any of that. She just wanted to let the tears fall and hope that they eroded away the horrible memories.

She didn't know whether she would have preferred Elphaba to leave or not, but there she was still, perched on the blonde's bed, a safe enough distance away to not be touching, but to simply be present. It was… comforting, in a way. And yet, she was so confused by it that it was almost more upsetting.

"Are you trying to mock me?" she finally asked.

"No."

The answer was so short and simple, Galinda was shocked. She sniffled, her tears beginning to subside the slightest bit, but she still kept her face in her hands. "Well, are you trying to ridicule or criticize me, then?"

"No."

"Are you trying to make me feel bad about standing up to her?"

"No."

"Are you trying to make me feel awkward?"

"No."

Exasperated, Galinda finally raised her head and looked to her roommate. Elphaba was watching her carefully, verdant hands folded almost delicately in her lap. Her long legs were planted on the floor. _Oz, why is she so tall?_ "How about you tell me, then? What _are_ you trying to do, Miss Elphaba the Delirious?"

As if suddenly distracted, Elphaba picked at a loose thread on her frock. "Nothing."

Galinda narrowed her eyes in disbelief. "Nothing?"

"Nothing."

"Then why are you here? On my bed?"

Thread abandoned, warm cocoa eyes met watery cerulean ones again. "Why are you letting me?"

That seemed to be the question. Galinda sighed and looked away, staring at a spot on the floor. She didn't know how to answer, so she just twisted her hands together and tried to focus on something else. Unfortunately, the only thing she could think about was the pain in her jaw, and that other pain that she tried her best to bury deep, so no one would see it. Why did it feel so strongly like she wanted to confess it all to the roommate she didn't know?

She finally broke and hung her head, letting tears fall freely again. "She's always been so… controlling… So dominant. When I was little, I used to think that there was something wrong with me, that maybe I was just wrong. After all, most little girls weren't supposed to enjoy playing in the hay and… and riding horses…" She sighed. "My father was my best friend, but he never stopped her. No one could ever stop her. I would sometimes wonder whether she was a byproduct of someone else, just like her, in her own past. Maybe, for all I hate her, I would become her one day, and that's just written in the stars."

"Nothing's written in the stars," Elphaba said quietly.

"You know… The funniest part? It's been years. I branched out on my own. I determined my own life. I wanted to become an architecture major, so I did. In spite of it all… I still don't feel strong. The moment she's around, my hair stands on end, and I'm two words away from becoming a crumbling mess. She's just so hateful. I don't know what I did to make her loathe me so… It's like, the very day I was born, I insulted her so heavily that she's never been able to get over it. I used to think that I was the problem, and I still do. What other explanation would there be? She's rude with others, but that's just her personality. I'm the only one that she… Well, if it's the same equation with different outcomes, then it must be the variable at fault. And… And when _I'm_ the variable, the equation breaks. I always wanted to be a good daughter. I tried so hard to be a good daughter to her."

Elphaba didn't respond, so Galinda shifted slightly and continued, actually feeling a bit of weight lift from her chest. "When I was younger, I'd really try to rein in my impulses and become a proper little lady for her. I kept my dress from being crumpled. I made friends with the other rich girls, even if they were mean to me. I sat still while my hair was being styled and all I really wanted to do was go outside and play. I did everything she ever wanted me to do, and it still wasn't enough. At some point, I guess, I just kind of gave up. I realized that I would never be enough for her. I was too broken," she finished, her voice cracking at the end.

Dark eyebrows twitched slightly, and then Elphaba visibly swallowed. "Hey, hey, no…" she murmured lightly as tears began to form in Galinda's eyes again. Elphaba shifted so she was facing the blonde more. "You're not broken. Look at me, Galinda." Reluctantly, blue eyes met dark ones. "You are _not_ broken. Don't you ever let her make you think you are." She only hesitated a second before reaching out and gently brushing her thumb along Galinda's cheek, wiping away the tears.

"Doesn't that burn you?" Galinda asked, her voice hardly more than a breath.

Elphaba shrugged and offered a sweet sort of half-smile. "I don't mind."

In spite of herself, Galinda couldn't help a small smile in return. Elphaba's smiles were just that contagious. "You have a funny way of comforting someone, you know that?" she asked once her mind was together enough to process a reaction.

"It's my first time," Elphaba admitted with a shaky laugh. "Are you feeling better, at least?"

"Enough, yeah," Galinda nodded. "I can… I can pick up the pieces from here. I just…" she paused and bit her lip, leaning in a little closer to her roommate. "Would you mind if I…?"

At first, Elphaba was confused, furrowing her brow as she tried to decipher the unfinished sentences. It finally clicked when Galinda's closeness registered in her mind, and she quickly looked away, hugging her stomach. Galinda wanted to be held. "I-I… I'm not really good with… being touched…" she admitted, trying hard to remain composed. "I'm sorry. I… I can't tonight. Plus, y-you'll probably regret it in the morning… You know, when you wake up and you've suddenly caught a bad case of verdigris."

A corner of her mouth quirked up at the end, and Galinda couldn't help a small giggle. She playfully pushed Elphaba's shoulder, catching her by surprise and almost causing her to fall off the bed. By the time they were both safe on the bed again, though, they were both grinning at each other.

"…You're going to be okay?" Elphaba asked cautiously, something that might resemble concern showing in her eyes.

Galinda swallowed and nodded a couple times. "I'm going to be okay. Thank you," she awarded her with a brilliant, genuine smile.

Elphaba could only chuckle as she got up and crossed the room over to her own bed, taking up her normal position again. "Why thank me? All I did was sit there and listen."

The smile didn't leave Galinda's face as she watched her strange roommate once more grab the same worn old tome she was reading before and slowly lose herself in it all over again. She sighed to herself.

"Sometimes, that's all it takes…"

 **A/N: Real quick note - the song Elphaba sings is _Hallelujah_ by Leonard Cohen. I'm aware that the lyrics say 'David' and not 'Qori', but I did change that to adapt it to Oz, and, more specifically, Quadling Country.**

 **I hope you guys enjoyed chapter ten! Please be sure to leave a review and let me know what you think and how I'm doing! :)**


	11. Chapter 11

**A/N: As promised, here's chapter eleven for you all. Once again, thank you so much to those of you that review - I really, really appreciate the feedback!**

 **Now, this chapter is a bit of a beast, and I've been so excited to post it for you all, so without further ado, I present to you: Chapter Eleven.**

It had seemed, that morning, a day like any other. It was a Tuesday, which meant, for Elphaba, Ozian Literature early in the morning, ethics class, then a three-hour break spent in the library before Biology, which was her last class of the day.

Further into the semester now, her professors had been digging deeper into their subjects, much to her delight. That first week had been somewhat boring, since most of what they taught, she had already learned from reading ahead in her textbooks. Even now, she read ahead, but the concepts themselves were expansive, and the professors were able to, in class, provide different ways of thinking about them.

Biology was one of three classes she shared with her enigmatic blonde roommate, though to date, they had never actually interacted during class. Or in the room at all, really, besides for that one day when she had revealed to Doctor Dillamond how she was created.

Her hands twitched over her notebook, pausing briefly in her notetaking. She couldn't forget. During breaks in the lecture, she wrote reminders to herself in the margins of her notebook. She couldn't forget. She couldn't forget. _Don't forget_.

Perhaps she had been more worried than she had to be, she realized once class ended. How could she forget something so important?

Miss Galinda had darted out of the room the moment it was over, though Elphaba knew that she didn't have any more classes that day, either. She didn't think any more on the subject, instead focusing on the task at hand. She took her time packing up, so by the time she was finished, everyone else in the lecture had already left.

"Is something the matter, Miss Elphaba?"

She exhaled slowly, reaching into her bag and pulling a faded black journal from it. It was bound and secured with a lock, and it took all of her willpower to keep it out in the open and not shove it back into the bag. She didn't respond verbally to Doctor Dillamond, unable to find words. Instead, she stood and approached his desk, holding the journal out to him.

He looked at her in confusion and she just nudged it closer so he would grasp it between his hooves. Then, she took off her left boot and dug out from within it a simple silver key. She held that out to him, too.

Doctor Dillamond gave her an odd look but took the key between his teeth, and with the key between his teeth and the journal between his hooves, he was able to maneuver well enough to unlock it. With the journal unlocked, he deposited the key onto his desk and shuffled the book open. Gazing down at it through his bifocals, he only had to read a couple sentences before he had a sort of realization.

Immediately, he looked up and met her uneasy gaze. "Miss Elphaba, is this…?"

She nodded stiffly and quickly. "Take care of it, sir, please?" she asked. "You can take your time with it, just… Just take care of it? That has…"

"Everything," he finished for her, and she nodded again. "Miss Elphaba, I am… honored. Truly honored that you would trust me with this. I assure you, it shall not leave my supervision."

She flashed him a small smile. "I trust you, Doctor. No one else needs to know about this, right?"

"My lips are sealed."

Bowing her head a little in gratitude, Elphaba slipped her boot back on, gathered her bag over her shoulder, and rushed out of the biology classroom before she could change her mind. She trusted Doctor Dillamond. It was just hard, when that journal was all she had, was the only proof she had that she was alive, and everything within it could be used so cruelly against her in the wrong hands.

She had to remind herself that Doctor Dillamond was old and wise, and he knew better than to leave it lying around. Her journal would not come to any harm whilst he had it, and he'd likely rather die than let it get into the wrong hands. The thought made her shudder.

As she got closer to Crage Hall, she was so lost in her own thoughts that she heard it all before she saw it. Fire, crackling loudly and angrily, off in the distance. It brought her back into focus and she stopped, finally looking forward.

There was Crage Hall, still about five minutes away. Flames roared out of broken windows, and a thick column of smoke rose up above it. There was a crowd of girls gathered around, and the screams were just starting to pierce her ears.

Elphaba broke out into a full-out sprint and skidded to a halt just seconds later, her unnatural speed helping her arrive quicker than normal. Her heart was beating loudly in her ears as she stared, wide-eyed, up at the burning building. She was vaguely aware of Galinda beside her.

"Elphaba!" she was sobbing. "Elphaba, our room! I-It's all gone!"

But Elphaba couldn't listen. "How long has it been burning?" she hissed.

"I-I don't know!" Galinda cried. "M-my sketchpad was in there! Oz, it was… It was the only thing I ever c-cared about!" She looked just about ready to collapse into her detestable roommate, but Elphaba was still looking around, trying to assess the situation, her only acknowledgement of Galinda being strong green hands gripping pale arms and holding her at a distance.

Madame Morrible was standing before a hysterical Pfannee. "The professionals are coming," she reassured the girl.

"But Milla!" Pfannee was howling. "She's still in there! She could be hurt, or burned, or – Oh Oz!" she covered her face with her hands as her knees gave out.

Galinda looked desperately towards her roommate. Elphaba always seemed so invincible. "What are we going to do?" she wept, and then the blurry world came back into focus, ever so briefly, just for the span of a second. But in that second, she could have sworn that Elphaba looked like she was about to do something incredibly stupid.

And then, Elphaba did something incredibly stupid.

She let go of Galinda, and then she was gone, satchel dropped onto the ground, running towards the burning building at full speed. Elphaba could vaguely hear Galinda screaming her name, and Madame Morrible crying out indignantly for her to stop, but it was as if her ears were clogged, and she could focus only on trying to save people from horrible, horrible fates.

There was fire on both sides of the stairs, but the narrow path in between was more than enough for her thin frame. She felt the heat pressing against her, but she didn't let it slow her down as she flew up the stairs, breathing heavily.

The second floor was filled to the brim with fire, plumes arcing up towards the ceiling angrily. She was reminded, briefly, of her first encounter with fire – that vulnerable night where she had stuck her hand too close and been rewarded with nothing short of ridicule by her roommate. She shook her head to focus back on the present. There was still a small pathway in between the flames, and she took advantage of it, running down the hallway, straight past Room 22.

 _22, 23, 24, 25, 26…_ 27!

She halted before Room 27, and no sooner than she had found it did a gut-wrenching scream sound from inside. It was no regular scream – it was nothing like the girlish screams of a frisky game of truth or dare, the cries that had so often floated down the hall from Miss Galinda and her friend group, gathered in this very room. No. This scream was that of someone who had seen their death and was desperate to keep it at bay.

Her hand grasped the doorknob, but she hissed and withdrew it quickly, the fire having heated it up to an unbearable temperature. She didn't even glance down at the wound before kicking the door open with all of the strength she could muster. The thing burst off of its hinges, and she hesitated ever so slightly before going in, assessing the locations of the heat. There was a small line down at the floor, but she was able to jump over it and get inside safely.

It was slowly becoming harder and harder to breathe, and Elphaba did her best to force air into her lungs as she searched the room for the familiar face. She didn't have to look long, luckily, to find Milla, huddled underneath her desk, shaking horribly.

Elphaba ran over to her, leaping over a fallen piece of ceiling. Milla stared at her with wide eyes and whimpered in terror. Without speaking at first, for she felt she could not force any words past the soot building in her throat, Elphaba reached down and tried to grasp the other girl. She flinched and withdrew as her wounded hand exploded with pain. Milla was reaching out towards her, though, almost blindly groping for some sort of hold.

"Miss Milla," Elphaba wheezed, her throat burning. "Miss Milla, I need a favor. I can get you down to safety, but I need you to hold onto me. Can you do that? Can you hold onto me?"

Milla nodded mutely, sobbing, and Elphaba extended her uninjured hand to her. Milla grasped it and Elphaba was able to pull her out from under the desk. She held the girl to her with ease, one of Milla's hands clutching the side of her frock and the other buried in her hair, almost threatening to begin tearing strands with how hard she gripped.

Breathing hard, Elphaba turned and maneuvered her way back out of Room 27. Her mouth and throat were incredibly dry, and somehow, in the span of seconds, the fire had gotten even more intense. She clutched the shaking girl close to her and quietly made her way to the stairs. She had to step more carefully this time, with not just her own life at stake should she misstep.

She was vaguely aware of Milla weeping something in her ear, something that might have been a profuse apology if it were any better articulated, but she shook her head, not wanting to hear it. "Hush, Miss Milla, hush. It's alright. I've got you…"

Once at the bottom of the stairs, she wasted no time in kicking the front door down, like she had done to Milla's room, and running back out to the crowd. People stared at her in shock as she gently placed the girl down on the ground and gave her a quick examination.

Milla was burned, but not too terribly bad, from what she could tell. The girl's face was black with soot, and it took some effort to pry her hands off of her green savior. She was shaking and sobbing, but Pfannee and Shenshen were quick to take her and get her further to safety.

"Elphaba!"

For the span of a second, it seemed, Elphaba met Galinda's desperate gaze, but before the blonde could say anything more, she had darted back into Crage Hall.

The flames had grown even more spiteful, it seemed, and there was now a climbing line on the steps of the stairs. Elphaba didn't even hesitate before running back up them as quickly as she could. She did stop, though, when her foot caught on one of the steps and her legs fell into the flaming line across the step above it. She held in a cry, biting her lip to the extent of which she tasted blood as she sat on a step and drew her burned ankles closer to her.

It was almost ironic, the wetness of the blood filling her otherwise dry mouth and throat. She coughed and spat before lifting herself back up to her feet. She balanced shakily, her resolve stronger than ever as she recalled those distraught, watery blue eyes.

She made it up the rest of the stairs without serious incident besides falling into a rough coughing fit every other minute or so. She was getting lightheaded, and nauseous, and Oz, if she died here, then she wouldn't be surprised. Upon reaching Room 22, she didn't even bother reaching for the door handle, this time kicking the door in, as she had done with the others.

Time was slow, methodical. She bolted in, over burning wood planks from the ceiling, and headed straight towards Galinda's bed. The bottom half was in flames, but the top half remained safe for the most part. She let out a small breath of relief that quickly turned into more coughing. She had seen Galinda fiddle with the sketchpad enough to know exactly where it was, and her uninjured hand immediately found it, buried under the top right corner of an excessively decorated mattress.

Elphaba leapt off of the bed, the artbook held close to her body. She looked to her side of the room, freezing as she saw her bookshelf, up in flames. It occurred to her, ever so briefly, that her side of the room was not as she left it, but all she could focus on was her bookshelf. She let out a choked sob, and then a burning, fallen piece of wood from the ceiling hit her left shoulder and she cried out. She had to leave before the entire building collapsed on her.

With one last, pained look back at her books, at everything she ever owned, she fled the room, skipping down the stairs. It was nothing short of a miracle that she didn't trip again, with how fast she escaped. Her steps were panicked, but somehow, still steady.

She didn't remember leaving the building and finding Galinda, once again, in the crowd. She was struggling to focus her gaze, but she managed to center it on Galinda, and keep it there.

"Elphaba! Oh, Oz…" Galinda was weeping, and it was with no small amount of effort that Elphaba practically threw her sketchpad at her, unable to think of much else. She stared down at it in complete confusion for a second, trembling, before dropping it to the ground and enveloping her roommate in her arms. "Elphaba, oh Elphie, I was so worried, you stupid thing…"

Blinking rapidly, Elphaba tried to find her voice, but it was mysteriously absent, and all she could do was cough. She carefully wrapped her arms around Galinda, for once finding that the touch was not altogether unwelcome like she might have expected.

"Miss Elphaba!"

Elphaba flinched and pulled away at the harsh tone of Madame Morrible, approaching swiftly. Her face was red and blotchy as her anger combatted her makeup. "That was completely and utterly foolish! Running into a burning building! You ought to be ashamed of yourself!"

"Elphaba…"

She turned her head back to Galinda, far more willing and able to listen to the blonde Frottican. Galinda's eyes were still wet and puffy, but she kept a gentle hold on Elphaba's arms, an odd look on her face. If Elphaba had known what it looked like, she might have called it concern.

"Elphie, we need to get you to an infirmary."

Shaking her head quickly and fervently, Elphaba stumbled a step away from her, bumping into Madame Morrible before righting herself in between them. Her face was dark with soot, and Galinda reached up to wipe at it with her sleeve.

Forcing a swallow, Elphaba took a deep breath, but ended up falling into another coughing fit. Once it was over, she looked pleadingly to Galinda. She could hear Madame Morrible saying more to her, but the words went straight over her head. "N-no infirmary…" she said, her voice hoarse. "I just… I just need to lie down…"

Galinda looked over her, but with all of the soot and the blackness of her frock, it was impossible to tell whether or not she was hurt. She looked up, noticing the medics that had arrived. Milla was on a stretcher and was being wheeled back to the infirmary. She could speak up, get Elphaba admitted. Get her taken care of. There was something about the look on her roommate's face, though, that stopped her. "Okay…" she murmured softly. "Okay."

"Madame," she suddenly turned to the headmistress. "Is there anywhere we can stay? Does Shiz have accommodations in place already, or…?"

Morrible paused her ranting, her lips pursed fishily. She scoffed after a moment, apparently realizing that she'd get nothing from Elphaba, who barely looked as if she was able to hold herself up at this point. "We'll reimburse a hotel room," she gave in.

Nodding uneasily, Galinda took Elphaba's arm in her own, practically clinging onto her. "C'mon, Elphie, we'll get you somewhere you can lie down…"

Elphaba walked with her as she led her away, but then suddenly stopped, her eyes wide. She wriggled away from Galinda and bent down, retrieving the abandoned sketchpad. It was with a renewed sort of energy that she shoved it at its owner. With a gentle, almost sad smile, Galinda took it and tucked it into her bag.

"Thank you," she whispered, then wrapped an arm around Elphaba's shoulders. She flinched and ducked away again, this time with a small hiss, and Galinda frowned, realizing that she must be hurt. After all, one would have to be the luckiest person in all of Oz to remain completely unscathed after running into a burning building twice…

Galinda didn't say anything yet, only securing the arm across Elphaba's back rather than her shoulders and leading her away from Crage Hall.

Neither of them spoke much as they walked away from Shiz campus and into the city. Galinda thought that they must look so strange, walking close and alone, with Elphaba quite clearly less than her best. It got to the point where she was just about slumped against the blonde, letting Galinda guide her, her own legs too weak to really hold herself up. She would dissolve into a coughing fit every few minutes, too, and was overall not doing a very good job of convincing Galinda that it was the right decision to forego the infirmary.

The first hotel Galinda found was, luckily, not an extraordinarily disreputable one (as several throughout Shiz were). In fact, Elphaba thought wearily with no small degree of irony, it was the same one that Nanny and Nessa had stayed at during their visit.

The receptionist inside gave them an uneasy look as they entered, and Galinda did her best to ignore it. She knew how they looked. The stares bugged her, but she had to focus on getting Elphaba to a bed and cleaning her up. "One room – two beds, please," she said to the receptionist, handing over a small purse of coins.

The woman pursed her lips and glanced over them. "For how long?"

Galinda hesitated. "One night for now, but we might extend it."

Glancing out the window, the receptionist frowned, seeing the smoke from campus. "Were you girls caught in that fire?" she asked.

"Well, sort of. We came after it started, but _someone_ ," she looked pointedly at Elphaba, "ran in to save a girl that was trapped."

Elphaba laughed shakily, but then coughed some more after. "What can I say? Chivalry is not altogether dead." It was hard to tell with how dirty her face was, but Galinda could have sworn she was blushing.

The receptionist hesitated, and then pushed the purse of coins back at her. She reached down and took out a set of room keys, sliding it across the desk towards them.

Stunned, Galinda took the keys and her purse. "Thank you," she told the woman earnestly, quickly taking Elphaba's arm in hers and steering her towards the stairs. "I need to start telling people you're a savior more often," she muttered jokingly.

"Don't call me that," Elphaba retorted, but it lacked her usual bite.

The room they had been given was on the third floor, and Galinda paused as they approached the stairwell. She cast a cautious glance towards her roommate, but Elphaba's face was expressionless. She pulled the blonde forward, towards the stairs. Galinda had no choice but to follow, keeping her hands secured around Elphaba's arm.

At the third level, though, Elphaba stopped in the doorway, staring out into the hallway. Galinda paused, letting go, and frowned at her. "Elphie…? What's wrong?"

Elphaba narrowed her eyes, but her face was otherwise unreadable. She crossed her arms over her chest, her hands clutching the opposite elbow. "This," she gestured vaguely. "You. This… This makes no sense. Why are you being kind to me?"

Shoulders drooping, Galinda sighed, knowing that this conversation would come sooner or later. She had just hoped that it would have been later.

"Do we have to talk about this?" she asked weakly.

Elphaba gave her a look that might have been withering if she was at her full energy. "I don't want to be –" she was cut off by another coughing fit, this time thrusting out a hand against the doorframe to steady herself. The moment her hand touched it, though, she let out a hiss and held it close to her body. Galinda reached out to her, but she withdrew, glaring at the blonde.

Taking a deep breath, Galinda all but gave up. "Look, Elphie. You're hurt. You're hurt, and exhausted, and you overexerted yourself. We can talk about this later."

"Rubbish. I am none of that," she stated, and her throat tightened, as if she was holding back more coughing.

Galinda rolled her eyes. "Of course not. You're invincible. Miss Elphaba the Delirious, right?" She could've sworn she saw a smile on her roommate's face.

"What's the real reason why you won't talk to me about it?"

Lifting one shoulder in a half-shrug, Galinda met her roommate's gaze earnestly. "Maybe because I don't have an answer for you yet. I promise you, though, that when I do, I will tell you. Can we go to our room now?"

Elphaba softened and nodded, and didn't say anything when Galinda took her arm again and began leading her down the hallway. Upon reaching room 341, Galinda disengaged from her roommate again and took one out of the keys, unlocking the door. She opened it and brought Elphaba inside, immediately nudging her towards one of the beds.

The room itself wasn't anything spectacular – just a tad bit bigger than their dorm room. The bathroom was smaller, however. There was a full-length mirror against one of the walls, and the two beds were each rather big for one person, meant for couples.

Galinda tried not to shudder at the thought, instead focusing on taking care of Elphaba. She pushed gently on Elphaba's arms, forcing her to sit on the bed. Elphaba just watched her quietly, letting herself be maneuvered. Galinda paused, looking away. They didn't have any of Elphaba's oils – everything was lost in the fire.

"Your burn oil. What's it called?"

"Oak Burn Salve."

"There's an old apothecary shop, down near the edge of Shiz. Do you think I could find some there?" Elphaba only shrugged in response. Galinda pursed her lips, thinking, and then sighed. "Lay down. Rest."

She began to move away, but then Elphaba reached out, her right hand seizing the blonde's wrist. "Where are you going?" she asked, her eyes wide and head tilted downwards a little.

"I'm doing what I do best," Galinda told her, and then flashed her a dazzling smile. "Shopping." Again, she could've sworn that Elphaba smiled, but then she started coughing, and Galinda nudged her again. "Rest, Elphie. I'll be back soon."

Obediently, Elphaba laid back with a small nod, not trusting herself to say anything more. Galinda shot her one last look before leaving the room, tucking the keys into her bag that she still carried – she should have emptied her biology textbook from it first, she thought, but it was too late now. She didn't want to reenter and disturb Elphaba now that she'd finally gotten her to lay down.

Now that she was alone, though, walking towards the apothecary, her thoughts were the only company she was able to find. She didn't understand it, any of it. Just yesterday, she would have recoiled to even touch Elphaba, but now, she was almost clinging onto her, almost hugging her. Even when Elphaba first showed up outside Crage Hall, before she went in, Galinda had almost clung to her. She didn't have to, but she almost did. She could have just as easily wept with Pfannee, and yet, she chose Elphaba.

Part of her whispered that maybe she _wouldn't_ have recoiled at the thought of touching Elphaba yesterday – maybe that was just what she would be expected to do. After all, that night where she had stolen the green girl's book, Elphaba had practically been on top of her, and she had allowed it. And then… After her parents' visit, she had even sought an embrace from her strange roommate.

It was incredibly confusing, and she couldn't help but wonder whether or not she detested her roommate as much as she thought. There were times when she even almost enjoyed her company, but it was so hard to tell whether she truly did or not. The very idea of Elphaba went against everything she had been taught as a child – improper, vague, academic, sour, independent. It was thrilling, in a way, when she would interact with her.

Oz, and there was something distinctly divine about the girl's smiles. Galinda felt her face heat up as she realized how that would sound to a third party. It was _true_ , though, a voice in her head whined. When Elphaba would smile – genuinely smile – it was almost like a blessing. Something so rare and pure. Galinda realized that that perhaps wasn't always a good thing.

She had never tried to see things from Elphaba's point of view, had she? Having a green roommate was horrific, but perhaps not as horrific as actually having green skin, being forced to live with the defect. If she deigned, she could simply stay away from Elphaba, but Elphaba couldn't simply stay away from herself. Perhaps that was why she hid in her books all the time… Galinda winced. It was one thing to tease someone, but what was it to be the subject of the teasing?

Briefly, she thought of her mother, of all of the awful things she'd say and do. It was horrible, soul-crushing, even, being treated like that. Was that not how she often treated Elphaba, how her friends treated her? How would that affect a person, to be abused by all of Oz for something that was out of one's control? Was that why Elphaba was so standoffish, why she trusted so little? If Galinda had been ostracized by all of Oz like she was, she wasn't sure she'd be able to bear interacting with people at all – why speak to people when all they wanted to do was hurt you?

And yet… Elphaba had run into a burning building to save one of her main bullies, and the treasured possession of another. She had risked her own life, and for what? For people who'd rather see her at the bottom of a lake than get near her?

She thought back on her own confusions. Would she really rather harm Elphaba than touch her? _No_. She knew that much. Especially not now. Then why couldn't she admit to actually enjoying the company of the green girl? Why couldn't she admit to maybe even liking Elphaba? Would it truly be so bad to be her friend?

Galinda paused, taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. She didn't know what to think. What to do. She didn't want to hurt Elphaba, but she had to wonder just how lonely such an existence as she led could be.

Elphaba had saved those who would hurt her out of some pure, earnest goodness in her. Galinda didn't know if she could be the friend that she deserved, but she vowed to herself that she'd damn well try, if only because someone that good shouldn't have to be so alone.

The apothecary looked more akin to an old, rundown warehouse than it did a shop. The siding was old and mossy, and there was a broken window at the front. She had never gone near it before because she found it hard to believe that any business could be run from such a decrepit place. She had thought, at some point, that it wasn't real, that it was a trick of her imagination, but as she grew closer, she knew that it was, in fact, very real, and very spooky.

Part of her said weakly that it was better than an infirmary. If the apothecary didn't have everything she needed, she'd have to go to an infirmary. She knew that, and yet, she tried not to think about it; just the mere thought of those smooth, sterile walls and white lighting suffocated her. She had gone into an infirmary once for Elphaba, and she'd do it again, but if it was avoidable…

They had never done anything with the roll of gauze, she remembered suddenly. It had forever remained in its spot on the floor of their small bathroom, there so long that they had simply forgotten about its existence, much in the same way they tried to forget about that night in general. The roll would be burned to a crisp by now, like everything else in their room…

She shook her head to clear that thought. She had her sketchpad. Oz, Elphaba had run into a burning building a second time to save her _sketchpad_. Not any of her own beloved books. Nothing of her own. Only what Galinda treasured. She swallowed hard and opened the door to the apothecary, stepping inside.

The first thing that hit her was the smell – musty, old, and moldy. It wasn't pleasant, but it also wasn't overwhelmingly terrible. The next thing she noticed was how small the shop truly was. There were really only a few aisles and racks, and then a cash register with an old, crooked woman behind it.

Upon seeing her, the woman grinned, showing off her missing teeth. "Hello, darling," she greeted her warmly.

Galinda gave her a nervous smile in response and immediately shuffled towards one of the shelves. She found countless jars of various herbs and spices and more of nameless medicines that she couldn't distinguish between. She moved onto the next shelf – crystals and glass shapes, some vaguely resembling various animals (Animals?) and some simply polished or uncut.

It was on the next shelf that she found bottles of oil, breathing out a sigh of relief. She looked through them, trying to find the oil that Elphaba had indicated, but it was nowhere to be found. Her heart started beating faster – Elphaba needed that oil. It had to be somewhere…

"Need help?"

She jumped as the old woman appeared beside her suddenly, her back hunched. One of her eyes was silver, looking almost murky and vague.

Galinda swallowed hard. "I-I… I need an oil… It's called… Um…" She was unable to find words, unable to focus on anything besides that one eye that seemed to stare deep into her soul.

The woman smiled wide. "Yackle knows what you need, darling," she tittered lightly, and then produced a brown bottle from seemingly nowhere. On it was a frayed label that read _Oak Burn Salve_.

"How did you…?"

Yackle just cocked her head and handed the bottle to the blonde. "Bandages are on the south wall."

Shaking her head, Galinda tried to function, befuddled by how the old woman could know exactly what she was looking for. She turned away, holding the bottle close to her and heading towards the south wall, where there were, indeed, rolls of bandages. She hadn't even thought to buy bandages, but it made sense. She didn't want her roommate's burns to get infected. She winced, wondering if Elphaba's previous burn – the one that her friends had administered so cruelly – had infected, or if it had healed properly. She severely hoped for the latter.

As she grabbed one of the rolls from the rack, she thought about where she knew her roommate was burnt. One of her shoulders, maybe, because she had withdrawn when Galinda had tried to put a hand around them. Her left hand – she had tried to brace herself with the doorway and had showed the hurt for just a moment too long. Oz knew where else. She could have burned the entirety of her back again for all Galinda knew.

She admonished herself. Elphaba's clothing would be severely burnt if that had occurred. Pausing, she considered that. She had been so preoccupied with everything that she hadn't even noticed the girl's clothing – it was black, so nothing stood out immediately, but she could not, for the life of her, recall focusing on any part of Elphaba's attire. Perhaps that should be her first step to assessing the damage when she returned to the hotel room.

Oil and bandages in hand, she made her way slowly towards the register, her eyes carefully scanning the shelves on the way. What it is she was scanning for, she didn't know. Perhaps anything she had missed. Anything else that Elphaba might need. There was a shelf of lotions, and then a shelf of perfumes. The next shelf had jewelry, copper and bronze and silver chains with crystal and glass pendants.

One thing caught her eye – a double-layered silver chain. It didn't seem so significant at first glance, but for some reason, once blue eyes saw it, they locked. At the bottom of the chain was a translucent pendant, emerald and gold tendrils woven through the crystal. The pendant itself was vaguely oval-shaped, and roughly-cut around the edges.

Before she could stop herself, she reached out and took the pendant in her hand. Her thumb brushed along the side of it, feeling the grooves and tiny bumps that decorated the edges. She couldn't look away, her hand moving up and feeling the double chain. She hadn't ever seen something like it before – two chains linked together in such a way. Her hand moved back down to the pendant, and she stared through it, mesmerized by the tendrils.

There was something about the necklace that she couldn't quite place, though certainly not through a lack of trying. It was almost as if it had some sort of low, humming power to it, but at the same time, it seemed unwilling to open up to her, so if it did have some sort of power, it wasn't anything she was able to truly get a sense of. Her finger brushed along the smooth crystal as she exhaled slowly, knowing that this pendant, this piece of power, would not belong to her – it was not meant for her, and part of her told her that she didn't want it, anyway.

"A pretty bauble," crooned the hag as she appeared suddenly, right beside Galinda again. The blonde jumped, dropping the pendant as if it had burned her.

She glared at Yackle as the woman just cackled, not entirely unlike how Elphaba would, she thought. Perhaps it was a common feature of the wicked. She winced, reminding herself that Elphaba was _green_ , not wicked, and she was in fact a sort of embodiment of good, if such a thing ever did exist.

In spite of herself, Galinda found her gaze drawn back to the charm. "How much for it?" she asked quietly, resignedly.

Yackle took the chain in her wrinkled, crooked fingers and held it out to the blonde. "Free, if you know who to give it to."

Scowling at the vagueness and the stench of the woman's breath, Galinda took the chain, holding it delicately. "And whatever could _that_ possibly mean?"

"Yackle says exactly as she means," she tutted, and then beckoned the blonde over to the register. Galinda deigned not to honor that with a response, instead handing over the coins for the bandages and oil.

She didn't waste time in leaving the strange woman's presence, exiting the shop and quickly shoving the bandages and oil into her bag. The necklace, she took a little more care with, safely tucking it into an inside pouch. What had Yackle meant? she wondered. _Free, if you know who to give it to._ What could that mean?

Giving her head a quick shake, she smoothed her hands down on the skirt of her dress and quickly made her way back towards the hotel, ducking her head a little to stare at the ground in confusion the whole way.

Returning to the hotel was almost a blur, far different from the leisurely, contemplative walk from. She could hardly remember anything from it, only that she needed to get back to safety, away from wicked, mad hags and powerful baubles and back to her injured roommate. Part of her – the maternal part, perhaps – wanted to be able to tend to Elphaba's wounds, but she knew that it was unlikely that the standoffish green girl would even allow her near her. She knew how Elphaba got when she was hurt and vulnerable – she had seen it twice before now, when the girl had stuck her hand into fire, and when Galinda's own friends had hurt her. Both, she recalled, involved her getting burned, and she thought, with no small amount of irony, that now was no different.

Elphaba always gave off the impression that she was truly and utterly invincible – words would not deter her, a knife would simply bounce off of her thick green skin, and if death tried to look her in the eye, he'd cower with fear at her steely glare. Perhaps it was only burning that broke through her wall of invincibility. Fire and water, the two most opposing elements in the world, were the only things strong enough to hurt the fortress of fortitude. What did that mean about Elphaba, though? Did it mean she was stronger than most of Oz? Did it mean she was weaker?

 _It likely means nothing at all,_ she chastised herself as she reached Room 341 and held the key up to the lock. She hesitated, listening for any sounds from inside, but was met with silence. She unlocked it and entered slowly and quietly.

There was a body laying on one of the beds, stock-still and hardly moving. Still, Galinda let out a breath of relief. Elphaba was asleep. She almost worried, for a minute, that the girl wasn't alive – she moved so little when she slept, always laying like a corpse – but she was able to discern the gentle rise and fall of her figure under the blanket.

Moving carefully, she entered the adjoining bathroom and unloaded the bottle and roll into a cabinet. She ought to let her roommate sleep for now. They could always treat her burns later – it wouldn't cause too much of an issue to wait a day, anyway. That much she remembered from what her father taught her when he'd get hurt hunting. It was not altogether an uncommon event, and he taught her as much as he knew about medicine, in case she were ever in a position to help someone else.

She remembered being young, and naïve, and insisting that a lady should never be the one to get her hands so dirty. She paid little attention to his lessons, because as she told him, she had no need for them and never would. He wouldn't argue with her, but the next time he or one of his friends returned hurt, he'd beckon her over and show her how to handle it all over again.

The sun was growing ever lower in the sky, and she shook herself out of her thoughts. If she wasn't going to be caring for her roommate at the moment, she could still be doing _something_. They needed food for dinner tonight, she told herself.

The trip to the small diner was even quicker than the one to the apothecary, but upon arriving and preparing to order takeout, she realized that she had no idea what Elphaba liked. Uncertainly, she ordered a standard soup native to Munchkinland for her and a parmesan salad for herself. She realized that there was really a lot that she didn't know about her roommate.

Really, what _did_ she know? That she was green? From Munchkinland and Quadling Country? Had a sister? Was allergic to water? She could easily list dozens of facts about Pfannee, Shenshen, or Milla, but could only dredge up four about Elphaba.

 _That's not true_ , she told herself. _You know she likes to read. You know she likes to learn. She gets passionate about things that technically don't even pertain to her. You know she sees right through you because she's just that damn sharp-eyed. You know she has awful eyesight. You know she has compassion. You know she ran into a burning building to save someone who would otherwise wish her to fall into the canal._

She shook herself once again and hurried back to the hotel room, unable to stay alone with her thoughts any longer. This time, when she entered Room 320, Elphaba was sitting up in the beg, her legs dangling off the side of the bed and a book characteristically laying in her lap. She didn't look up when her roommate entered.

Holding back a sigh, Galinda knew that this wouldn't be easy. She flashed a dazzling smile and indicated the bag of takeout. "I brought food," she announced lightly.

Elphaba glanced up, narrowing her eyes at the takeout before returning them to her book. "I'm not hungry."

Scoffing, Galinda set the food down on a counter and took out the bowl of Munchkinland soup. She removed the lid and grabbed a plastic spoon from inside the bag, taking both things over to the grumpy green girl on the bed. "Of course you are. What are you reading, anyway?"

The book was flipped closed, a verdant hand marking the spot which was abandoned.

"A Unionist bible?" Galinda asked and laughed, though it was humorless. "Why in Oz would you want to read that?"

"I don't know," Elphaba said. "I don't think I do. Not really. It was just sitting in the nightstand."

Frowning, Galinda carefully took the book, placing it away from the bed, and nudged the soup closer to her. She finally caught sight of Elphaba's left hand, of the severe angry burns on its palm. Her green skin was marred with dark purplish-red welts. Hesitating, Galinda placed the soup on the nightstand and moved it carefully closer to the bed. She placed the spoon into Elphaba's uninjured hand before going and retrieving her own salad, perching on her own bed to eat it.

She was delighted when she heard Elphaba slowly begin to take spoonfuls of the soup. They sat in silence for a while longer, each one eating her own dinner and dreading the conversation that would soon take place.

Eventually, Galinda knew that she had put it off long enough. When both of them had finished eating, she stood and retrieved the oil and bandages from where she had stashed them in the bathroom. When she returned to the main part of the room, it seemed Elphaba knew what was coming, and was quickly reaching for her book again. "No," Galinda interrupted her, swooping in and swiping the book away. She placed the oil and bandages on the nightstand and put her hands on her hips, looking at her roommate sternly. "You have to clean your burns," she commanded.

"I didn't get burnt," Elphaba stated matter-of-factly, raising her chin defiantly in the air.

Galinda raised an eyebrow, a move she had learned from Elphaba herself. "Poppycock, Miss Elphaba," she scoffed. She earned a look of dry amusement, fleeting though it was. "You ran into a burning building _twice_ , might I remind you, and you flinched when I tried to touch your shoulder, and I can _see your burnt hand right there_!" she seethed, then paused and took a deep breath to calm herself. Elphaba looked thoroughly surprised. "Now, are there any other burns I should know about?"

"I…" Was it possible? Was the great, mighty Elphaba Thropp speechless? The thought amused Galinda, but the green girl found her voice soon enough after clearing her throat. "My ankles," she confessed.

Galinda took up the oil and bandages again and approached her roommate. Oz, the girl's dress looked even worse now that she peered closer, but it was hard to tell from afar by the dark color. She knelt before the bed and took hold of the edge of the frock. She began to lift it, just enough to get a good view of burnt green ankles, but Elphaba's uninjured hand shot out, smoothing it back down.

"I can do it myself," she snapped, dark eyes burning with something.

The blonde stood back up with a frown. "Alright, well, at least let me do your shoulder. You can't reach that enough to properly care for it." Steely gazes met and held each other for what seemed like hours, each one willing the other to give in. Eventually, Elphaba sighed and averted her gaze, her nod nearly imperceptible. Galinda managed to catch it, though, and smiled to herself a little at her triumph.

She climbed onto the bed and positioned herself behind the green woman but hesitated before going further. "Would you prefer me to rip the fabric on your shoulder, or would you prefer to – "

"Just rip the thing."

Swallowing hard and nodding, Galinda put her supplies down and carefully grabbed the already burned fabric over the back of Elphaba's shoulder, making sure she didn't touch the wound. The fabric was tough – built to last, she supposed – but after a few tugs, she tore it to where she had enough space to clean wound.

She left briefly to grab a washrag from the hotel bathroom, dousing it in a generous amount of oil once she'd returned. Her touch was gentle as she cleaned the nasty-looking burn. "What caused this?" she asked tenderly.

She could feel Elphaba swallow and shift a little. "A burning plank hit me in our room," she croaked, her voice suddenly hoarse.

Galinda gave her head a small shake and returned to her task. She wanted to apologize, but she didn't even know what she would be apologizing for. _What wouldn't you be apologizing for?_ her mind pointed out, and she was grateful that she was behind the green woman so that her shameful blush wasn't visible.

It didn't take long to clean the burn – it wasn't nearly as big as the one that her friends had given her. Galinda realized that she could still see the edges of the scar from the bucket of water, even in her limited window of the green shoulder.

Oz, if she had known that water would burn her, she'd never have let her friends do it.

As she finished up cleaning the injured shoulder, she became suddenly very aware of the flat curtain of hair falling down Elphaba's back. Maybe it was because of the stress of the day, or maybe it was because she was seeing the green woman in a whole new light, or maybe it was even because of the position they were in, how intimate it all seemed and so suddenly, but against better judgment, Galinda couldn't stop herself from reaching out and touching the dark, silky locks. Night rain, she remembered calling it once.

Elphaba's hair was impossibly soft, just like her skin, and the moment her fingers gently scratched the scalp underneath, Elphaba shuddered, practically melting into the touch. Galinda didn't stop, though, letting her fingers glide gently through the curtain that she had longed to feel for so long. It simply wasn't fair that someone so ugly should have such pretty hair. Some small voice in the back of the blonde's voice told her that Elphaba wasn't ugly, not really, but she was far too preoccupied with her current task, combing through the gorgeous sheets, to actually focus on it, not that she'd know what to think of it either way.

"What are you doing?"

Elphaba's voice was quiet and rougher than usual, but it was present still. Galinda leaned forward a little to get a good look at the girl, finding her dark eyes glazed over ever so slightly. She smirked to herself and continued brushing her fingers through the soft strands of dark hair, making sure to gently scratch the scalp underneath, earning herself a small shiver each time. There was something entrancing about the way Elphaba reacted.

She was vulnerable. Completely, utterly vulnerable. Galinda was reminded briefly of the first time the pair had shared an encounter with fire, when Elphaba had so naively stuck her hand into the flames of their fireplace. Galinda had reamed her for it, unwilling to let the horrible green bean rest without knowing just how stupid she was that evening. Elphaba had withdrawn into herself, retaliating for the first time since Galinda had known her.

Galinda had thought about how vulnerable her roommate was then, too. Wounded. That's when she lashed out – when she was burned. Galinda remembered thinking that she could manipulate her roommate however she wanted. The very thought of manipulating anyone directly had made her sick and she had given up.

"I'm playing with your hair," she finally answered, her eyebrows furrowed slightly with thought.

That comment seemed to give Elphaba enough control to pull away, for she finally scooted forward, separating them. She turned, casting the blonde a semi-curious, semi-confused glance. "You, Miss Galinda, who would rather push me into a lake than actually touch me?"

Galinda scowled at that, not meeting her gaze. "I wouldn't push you…" she muttered helplessly.

"Of course not," Elphaba responded coolly. "You'd rather I did it myself. That way, your delicate little hands wouldn't get dirty."

"Don't act like you know me," Galinda remarked hatefully.

"I know all about you, Miss Galinda," Elphaba raised an eyebrow. "I know you spread rumors about me to enhance your own image. I know you tell your friends all sorts of false, wicked things about me. I know you encourage them to play a cruel prank on me, and oh, I know that you didn't _know_ water would burn me, but you still wanted me humiliated. I know you think you're so much better than anyone else just because everyone thinks you're beautiful. I know you took one look at me and saw me as nothing more than a hideous green monster."

What hurt worst, Galinda supposed, was the fact that most of what Elphaba said about her was _true_. She swallowed hard, her face red, and looked anywhere but at her verdant roommate. When Elphaba spoke again, her voice was a little gentler.

"I also know you tried to help me when I stuck my hand into fire. I know you tried to compensate for the pain your friends inflicted upon me with the water, something that no one's ever done for me before. I know you wouldn't have let them do it if you had been aware of my allergy. I know you could be sitting with your friends right now, or rooming with them in the best hotel room that money will buy, but instead, you're in this shoddy hotel with your standoffish roommate, insisting she allow you to help her with the wounds you know she can't reach." She paused, reaching out a verdant finger and placing it under Galinda's chin, lifting her head so deep sapphire eyes were forced to meet warm cocoa ones. "I know you, Galinda, and I know that you're not nearly as mean as you play."

Galinda was taken aback. She searched dark eyes for some sort of sign, something to tell her that this was her roommate being sarcastic and cold, like she always was, but she found nothing. Elphaba was telling the truth. This was what she believed. Galinda shook her head a couple times disbelievingly, still unable to find words.

Elphaba withdrew her hand and looked away finally. "I'm sorry for every wicked thing I've ever said or done to you. I… I don't often understand things. I haven't had as much chance to, I suppose. I stick to one interpretation of people and the world because I fear that any more will truly cause my mind to implode."

When Galinda's voice was finally cooperating, she surprised herself with the blatant question that came next.

"Why did you do it?"

By the look on the green girl's face, she _knew_ to what Galinda had referred. The blonde could visibly see her retreating, though, hiding away that part of herself that would apologize and open up, and putting those walls back in place. "…I haven't the foggiest idea what you mean." She ended up dissolving into a coughing fit afterwards, though the Frottican was glad that they had made it this far in the conversation before one seized her.

Galinda rolled her eyes and gave her head a little shake. "The building. Why did you go in? You could have died. Neither Milla nor I have ever really been kind to you. Why would you preserve us and that which we love?"

Elphaba tightened her jaw, staring at a speck on the wall. "Would you have preferred I didn't?"

"What? No. Oz, no. Elphaba, I am beyond grateful. I just don't understand _why_."

With a sigh, the green girl glanced down at her injured hand, the angry purple-red welts standing out colorfully against verdant skin. "My own life is precious and little, but it is mine. I have no other proof of my being here besides this cursed skin and this scrawny, thin body. What about Miss Milla? Where's her proof, if her body gets burned to a crisp in that flame? No one deserves that – a person's behavior is completely irrelevant of that fact."

Galinda stilled, her fingers twitching in her lap. There it was again. That strange, innate goodness that no one ever dared to see, instead focusing on the unnatural hue guarding it. "I wouldn't have done it," she whispered, focusing her gaze shamefully on the ground.

"You… are many things, Galinda," Elphaba began, her voice slightly strained. "I must admit that I have not been able to puzzle you out completely, though I have tried. Your actions are overall very contradictory and confusing. The Galinda that I see in the space of our empty dorm room and the Galinda that hits me with wads of paper during class are two entirely different people, and I struggle to determine which one is the true one."

Blue eyes closed against a wave of emotions. "I'd like to think the first one," she admitted quietly.

With a small grunt, Elphaba nodded. "I would, too. In spite of everything… If it had been me trapped in that building, I think you would have done more than you expect."

"But how do you know?"

"I don't. However, as I said before, what I _have_ managed to figure about you is that you're not nearly as mean as you try to be. You don't have it in you, and… That's not a bad thing."

Galinda suddenly met her eyes, silently pleading for some sort of assurance. Elphaba truly was awful at the whole comforting thing, but it was working to a degree. Still… "I don't know what I am. I don't know if I'm mean, or not. I don't know if I'm the woman that my mother shaped me to be, or the girl that my father would teach. I don't know if I'm the person who would push you off of a tower, or the one who would reach out to grab your hand before you fell. I don't know if I would rather recoil from your touch or lean into it. I don't know at all what I am."

"That one's easy," Elphaba said then, surprising her. The green girl gave her a lopsided smile, and then reached over to the nightstand and put out the lamp before getting up and moving to the other bed. She laid down, and didn't say anything for a long time, the only confirmation of her life being the slight rise and fall of her figure. Galinda almost thought the phenomenon that was her roommate had slipped into slumber, and was about to give up, when she heard Elphaba's voice again, this time laced with warmth and perhaps something else.

"You're fire."

 **A/N: I hope you all enjoyed! Please leave a comment, and I'm going to shoot for posting chapter twelve next Monday. I always say that reviews keep a writer writing :)**


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